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THE HANDBOOK SERIES 



SELECTED ARTICLES 

ON THE 

STUDY OF LATIN AND GREEK 



COMPILED BY 

LAMAR T. BEMAN, A.M., IX. B. 

Attorney at Law, Cleveland, Ohio 



NEW YORK 

THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 

London: Grafton & Co. 

1921 



(^ I A I I 



??* 



PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER 1921 
Printed in the United States of America 






EXPLANATORY NOTE 

The Classical Association of the Atlantic States published in 
1915 a forty page pamphlet entitled "The Practical Value of 
Latin" in which were given the opinions of many prominent 
people advocating the study of Latin and Greek, with an intro- 
duction that endeavored to answer most of the more common 
objections to the study of the dead languages. Three copies of 
this pamphlet were sent to each member of the association to- 
gether with a leaflet that asked for their co-operation "to get the 
pamphlet into the hands of those who need it most, the pupils 
and the parents who have to face the problem whether Latin 
shall be elected." Lower prices were charged for the pamphlet 
where a larger number of copies were taken for distribution. 
The leaflet further stated, "It is hoped that many members will 
purchase copies to be distributed as widely as possible. Mem- 
bers who are not in a position to distribute copies themselves 
may wish to- contribute to a fund for the distribution of copies ; 
such contributions will be most welcome." The pamphlet, on 
the inside of the first cover, states frankly that it is "published 
in the hope that children and parents both may be guided to a 
wise choice of studies in school and college by the aid of these 
convictions of persons of distinction." 

No criticism is offered here of this organized propaganda, 
and this is only one small phase of the propaganda carried on 
by the teachers of the dead languages, but the opinion is ex- 
pressed that it is seldom possible to reach a wise conclusion on 
any question that is a matter of public controversy by reading 
only one side of that case, and that this is particularly true when 
the ex parte statement is so largely a matter of opinions that 
have been compiled by interested parties. Children and parents 
may be, not "not guided to a choice," but rather given an oppor- 
tunity to get for themselves the facts that will enable them to 
decide upon an even wiser choice of studies if they have at their 
disposal a little volume that presents fully and fairly "the con- 
victions of oersons of distinction" on both sides of this old and 



vi EXPLANATORY NOTE 

long discussed question, a volume that endeavors to eliminate all 
bitterness and slurs, a volume in the preparation of which is 
no element of self interest or effort to lead the reader to 
the conclusion that the editor desires to create in his mind, a 
volume that endeavors to give so far as possible all the facts and 
the best of the "convictions" (that is, opinions) on both sides. 
Such is the general plan of the Handbook Series, in accordance 
with which this volume is compiled. Following the general plan 
of this series, the present volume endeavors to bring together 
the best that has been written on both sides of the old controversy 
over the value of the study of the Latin and Greek languages, 
to give bibliographical references to a wider field of the best 
literature of the question, and to include debaters' briefs in 
which the whole argument on each side is presented in skeleton 
form. 

Lamar T. Beman 
February I, 1921. 



CONTENTS 

Briefs 

Affirmative Brief ix 

Negative Brief xv 

Bibliography 

Bibliographies and Briefs _ xxix 

General References xxix 

Affirmative References xxxiii 

Negative References xliv 

Introduction 

General Discussion 

Classical Studies (Sonnenschein) 9 

Mediaeval Universities (Walsh) 13 

Requirements for the Bachelor's Degree (John) 17 

Brief Excerpts , 23 

Affirmative Discussion 

Case for the Classics (Shorey) 25 

^ Worth of Ancient Literature (Bryce) 52 

Value of the Classics to Students of English (Denney) 70 

u "llust the Classics Go? (West) 76 

Measurements of the Effect of Latin (Perkins) 88 

Classics in British Education 92 

L-^Value of Latin and Greek (Cole) 107 

Brief Excerpts 114 

Negative Discussion 

VValue of the Classics (Bain) 125 

t^Liberal Education Without Latin (Snedden) 149 

Value of Studying Foreign Languages (Starch) 168 

Education as Mental Discipline (Flexner) 175 

Teaching of English (Chamberlain) 193 

Classical Literature Through Translations (Sisson) 202 

Why I Have a Bad Education (Hall) 205 

t Examples^ of Dead Language Propaganda 213 

Brief Excerpts 216 



One group of educators sturdily defends the traditional class- 
ical course, with its great emphasis on Greek and Latin, while 
■another group as urgently insists that if any foreign languages 
are taught, they must be the modern ones. These opposing 
schools of thought are profoundly sincere in their conflicting be- 
liefs. Each side is absolutely certain that it is right and is un- 
alterably of the opinion that there is no other side of the 
question to be even so much as considered. Anything that agrees 
with its own side is based on reason; anything opposed is but 
ignorant prejudice. Under the circumstances the disinterested 
outsider may well suspect that where there is so much sincerity 
and conviction, there must be much truth on both sides. And 
undoubtedly this is the case. — Franklin Bobbitt, "What the 
Schools Teach and Might Teach," p. 96. Cleveland Education 
Survey, 1915. 

The presumption in favor of any belief generally entertained 
has existed in favor of many beliefs now known to be entirely 
erroneous, and is especially weak in the case of a theory which 
enlists the support of powerful special interests. The history 
of mankind everywhere shows the power that special interests, 
capable of organization and action, may exert in securing the 
acceptance of the most monstrous doctrines. We have, indeed, 
only to look around us to see how easily a small special interest 
may exert greater influence in forming opinion and in making 
laws than a large general interest. — Henry George, Protection or 
Free Trade, p. 12. 



BRIEFS 

Resolved, That a wise choice of studies in .high school or 
college would include Latin (and Greek.) 

Affirmative Brief 

Introduction. 

A. Historical statement. . . 

;.-„■_■ , i. The modern study of the ancient classical lan- 

guages dates from the fall of Constantinople in 

1453- 
2. It was introduced into England in the following 

century. 
3. It was brought to this country from England with 
our other institutions and customs. 

4. From the founding of Harvard College until quite 
recently the study of the ancient classical lan- 
guages was recognized as the pillar of the curricu- 
lum in every institution of higher education. 

5. The ancient, classical languages have gained 
ground during the past few years. : 

B. The purpose of higher education is to" disseminate true 

culture, 

1. Culture is knowing the best thathas been thought 
and said in the whole history^jH^nkind. 

2. A cultured person is one who fH V his mind and 
tastes a permanent source Of sSWaction and en- 
joyment. 

3. Culture is obtained from a liberal education, one 
that develops all the faculties and qualities of the 
mind. 

C. The affirmative will prove that the study of the an- 

cient classical languages: 

1. Gives a superior mental training. 

2. Is the foundation of all true culture. 



BRIEF 

3. Is exceedingly valuable for the knowledge it gives. 

4. Is the best foundation and preparation for other 
studies. 

5. Is approved and endorsed by most of the great 
educators and the men and women who have been 
leaders of thought and action. 

I. The study of the ancient classical languages gives a su- 
perior mental training. 

A. The classics have stood the test of time as a formative 

study. 

1. They have been so recognized for more than three 
hundred years in all civilized countries. 

2, They are today the pillars of almost every high 
school course in America. 

(a) More than half a million students in our 
public high schools are now taking Latin. 

(b) This number is constantly increasing. 

(c) The pupils who take Latin are the more 
substantial and serious minded students. 

B. The classic languages supplement science, mathema- 

tics, and history to make a well rounded course. 

C. The study of the ancient classical languages develops 

all the powers and faculties of the human mind. 

1. It gives the best known memory training. 

2. It develops accuracy and precision in the use of 
language. 

3. It trains and perfects the judgment. 

4. It enlarges the vision. 

5. It develops the reasoning powers. 

6. It quickens the powers of observation and per- 
ception. 

7. It gives concentration of mind. 

8. It develops breadth of sympathy. 

9. It enlarges the understanding. 

10. It develops habits of thoroughness and industry. 

D. The unquestionable results of classical training are 

absolute proof of its superior value as a form of 
mental training. 



BRIEF xi 

1. Students with a classical education invariably do 
the best work in the professional and scientific 
schools. (West, Value of the Classics, p. 364-86) 

2. Most of the great men of the world within the last 
three hundred years have had a classical education. 

3. Students who enter college without any classical 
preparation are not nearly as well equipped for col- 
lege work and do not accomplish as much in col- 
lege as those who have taken Latin and Greek in 
the preparatory schools. (University of Colorado 
Bulletin. Sept. 1914, and North American Review 
138:161. Feb. 1884.) 

II. The study of the ancient classical languages is the founda- 
tion of all true culture. 

A. It is universally so recognized. 

1. So recognized for three hundred years. 

2. So recognized in all civilized countries. 

3. So recognized by most of the great educational 
leaders. 

(a) Nicholas Murray Butler (Meaning of Edu- 
cation, p. 173.) 

B. It gives polish, grace and refinement. 

1. It gives one the power to understand and enjoy 
the best of our own literature, 
(a) English literature, especially poetry, abounds 

with references to ancient mythology and 

literature. 

C. It gives the power to appreciate the beautiful in art 

and architecture. 

1. By developing the power of observation and per- 
ception. 

2. By developing the imagination. 

D. It gives poise and mental equilibrium. 

I. Men and nations whose leaders have a classical 
education do not yield to hysteria in times of crisis 
or excitement. 

E. It gives one a sense of pleasure and satisfaction in his 

own mind. 



xii BRIEF 

III. The study of the ancient classical languages is very valu- 

able for the knowledge it gives. 

A. It reveals ancient civilization at first hand, it is his- 

tory by source material, 
i. The laws, customs, and institutions of the foun- 
dation civilizations are revealed. 

B. It gives the student first hand information concerning 

the best of the world's literature. 

1. No poet has ever equalled Homer, and no one 
really understands and appreciates Homer who has 
not read him in the original. 

C. It brings the student into direct contact with the na- 

tions that produced the best of the world's art and 
architecture. 

IV. The study of the ancient classical languages is the best 

foundation and preparation for other studies. 

A.. It contributes to success in the professions and 
sciences. 
i. It is a great help in the legal profession. 

(a) The phrases and maxims of the law are 
largely in Latin. 

(b) A knowledge of Latin makes a splendid in- 
troduction to the study of the civil law, 
which has come down to us from ancient 
Rome. 

2. It is very valuable for the medical profession, 
(a) Latin or Greek words make up the termin- 
ology of anatomy, pharmacy, botany and 
some other sciences. 

3. It is necessary as a preparation for the priesthood 
or the ministry. 

(a) The exact meaning of many passages of the 
scriptures can be ascertained only by one 
who has learned Latin and Greek. 

4. It is very helpful to most of the sciences. 

„ (a) Latin or Greek words make up the terminol- 
ology of most of the sciences. 



BRIEF xiii 

5. Most of the men who have achieved eminence in 
the professions and sciences in recent centuries 
have had a classical education. 

B. A knowledge of the ancient classical languages greatly 

facilitates the acquisition of the Romance languages. 

1. In any class in the Romance languages in any col- 
lege, the best work is done by those students who 
have mastered the classics. 

2. French, Spanish, and Italian are very largely de- 
rived from the Latin. (Sabin, The Relation of 
Latin to Practical Life, p 35) 

3. Students and teachers of Romance languages are 
unanimous in their statements of the benefits of 
a classical preparation for the Romance languages. 

C. A knowledge of the ancient classical languages is es- 

sential to a thorough mastery of English. 

1. This is the testimony of professors and teachers of 
English. 

2. About half of the words in the English language 
are derived from Latin or Greek. 

3. Careful translation gives a peculiar command of 
English. 

(a) It enriches the vocabulary. 

(b) It teaches the exact meaning of words. 

(c) It enables the student to grasp the meaning 
of many words without reference to the dic- 
tionary. 

(d) It greatly facilitates the use of the prefixes 
and suffixes. 

4. Latin or Greek Grammar gives new meaning to 
English Grammar. 

(a) It gives accurate knowledge and understand- 
ing of the English sentence. 

V. The study of the ancient classical languages has been ap- 
proved and endorsed as the best possible education by 
most of the great educators and by many of the great 
leaders in all fields of thought and action. West, Value 
of the Classics). 



BRIEF 

A. Educators. 

1. President Lowell of Harvard. 

2. President Hadley of Yale. 

3. President Hibben of Princeton. 

4. William T. Harris, former U. S. Commissioner of 
Education. 

5. President Butler of Columbia. 

6. Chancellor Day of Syracuse. 

B. Statesmen. 

1. James Bryce. 

2. Theodore Roosevelt. 

3. Woodrow Wilson. 

4. William E. Gladstone. 

C. Lawyers and Jurists. 

1. William H. Taft. 

2. Elihu Root. 

3. Roscoe Pound. 

4. A. Mitchell Palmer. 

D. Clergymen. , 

1. Hugh Black. 

2. Benjamin D. Warfield. 

3. John DeWitt. 

4. William D. McKenzie. 

E. Writers and Authors. 

1. James Russell Lowell. 

2. John Stuart Mill. 

3. Lyman Abbott. 

4. Henry Van Dyke. 

F. Physicians. 

1. Victor C. Vaughan. 

2. Mayo Brothers. ^5^ 

3. William S. Thayer. 

4. Charles S. Dana. 

G. Business men. 

1. James Loeb. 

2. William Sloan. 

3. Alba B. Johnson. 

4. S. S. McClure. 

5. George H. Putnam. 



BRIEF xv 

H. Engineers. 

1, Charles P. Steinmetz. 

2. John N. Vedder. 

Negative Brief 
Introduction. 

A. Almost all conditions of life have changed funda- 

mentally in the three hundred years since the study 
of the dead languages was introduced in England. 

1. Then there was relatively little else to study. 

(a) Such knowledge as did exist was largely 
locked up in the dead languages. 

2. Then the study of the dead^ languages was warmly 
supported and encouraged by despotism and in- 
tolerance. 

3. Now there are many useful studies. 

(a) The English language. 

(x) A good command and an elegant usage 
of English are now a necessity to all 
educated people. 

(y) The literature of the English language 
is now the best in the world. 

(b) There is now a vast body of important sci- 
entific knowledge. 

(w) Physical science, physics, chemistry, 
geology, astronomy^ geography, etc. 

(x) Biological sciences, botany, zoology, 
bacteriology, physiology, hygiene, etc. 

(y) Social sciences, economics, political 
science, sociology, etc. 

(z) Applied science, industrial arts, agricul- 
ture, commerce and engineering in its 
various branches. 

(c) History 

(d) Philosophy. 

(e) Mathematics. 

B. The meaning of the question. 

1. For practical purposes this question refers only 
to the study of Latin, for Greek has practically dis- 



BRIEF 

appeared from our high schools and colleges, so 
that most of the students could not take Greek 
even if they wanted to do so. 

C. The true purpose of education. Lapp and Mote, Learn- 

ing to Earn. Chap. I. 

1. To prepare each individual for a life of service. 

2. To develop the natural capabilities of each and 
every person, so that he may fill a useful place in 
society. 

D. The Negative will prove 

i. That the study of the dead languages is very harm- 
ful as a form of mental training. 

2. That the knowledge acquired from the study of 
the dead languages is absolutely useless to the aver- 
age person. 

3. That the study of the dead languages is not neces- 
sary for nor materially helpful to other studies. 

4. That the study of the dead languages entails an 
enormous social waste. 

5. That the study of the dead languages is strongly 
opposed by the majority of the able and disinter- 
ested people. 

The study of the dead languages is very harmful as a form 
of mental training. 

A. It gives a narrow one-sided training. 

1. It is chiefly memory training. 

(a) It expends rather than trains the memory. 
(Bain, Education as a science p. 367) 

2. It encourages acquiescence. (Spencer, Education; 
Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, p. 79) 

3. It develops narrowness and snobbishness. (Class- 
ical Journal 13 : 147) 

4. It does not develop initiative^ 

B. It does not develop the intellectual powers. 

1. The power of logical reasoning. 

2. The power of original thinking. 

3. The power of independent inquiry or bold investi- 
gation. 



BRIEF xvii 

4. The observing and reflective powers. (Adams, A 
College Fetich) 

C. It turns attention away from the realities of the world. 

1. Language is merely a tool of value as we make use 
of it. 

2. The intensive study of the dead languages uses 
the best years of the student's life on grammar, 
syntax, inflections, vocabulary, and translation of a 
few fragments of ancient literature. 

3. It is chiefly the few language-minded students who 
take more than a mere smattering of the dead 
languages, and these are the ones above all others 
who do not need this form of training. 

4. Language study does not develop the habits and 
the qualities of mind necessary for men of thought 
and action in the affairs of life in the twentieth 
century. 

D. The universal use of illegitimate helps makes abso- 

lutely impossible the good results that are claimed 
to follow from the slow and tedious grind of study- 
ing the dead languages, but instead makes the study 
conducive to dishonest methods in other things as 
well as making the so called culture very superficial. 

1. Handy literal translations. 

2. Interlinear translations. 

E. Claims often made and never proved that students 

who have taken the dead languages do better work 
in other studies, even if proved, would not prove 
any superiority for the training obtained from the 
study of the dead languages. 

1. As a general rule it is the abler students who take 
and continue work in the dead languages. 

(a) Other students are not wanted. Classical 
Journal 13 : 147 Dec. 1917. 

(b) Many weaker students change their course 
or leave school discouraged. 

2. In the professional and scientific schools compar- 
isons are usually meaningless. 



xviii BRIEF 

(a) Students who have taken the dead languages 
in high school and college are compared with 
those who have never been to college. 

F. The men of this generation who have taken Latin and 
Greek through high school and college have accom- 
plished less in life than men with a practical mod- 
ern education. 

II. The knowledge acquired from a study of the dead lan- 
guages is absolutely useless to the average person. 

A. Direct use of this knowledge is seldom if ever made. 

1. The knowledge acquired consists of : 

(a) Details of inflection, grammar, vocabulary, 
etc. of a dead language. 

(b) More or less ability to translate slowly and 
tediously. 

(c) A smattering of the facts of ancient history. 

(d) Some acquaintance with primitive pagan 
civilization, with its highly immoral mythol- 
ogy and childish superstition, its human 
slavery of white men, its gladiatorial fights, 
its very corrupt government and society, its 
brutal dungeons, its horrible warfare with 
spear and sword, its frequent murders, its 
wholesale robbery of its colonies, its utter 
intolerance and contempt of the rights of 
other nations. 

2. Not one student in a hundred makes any use at 
all of any of these facts. 

3. All students soon forget practically all of this in- 
formation. * 

4. It is outrageously absure* for high school and col- 
lege students to go through the dull and dismal 
grind of learning all this useless nonesense. 

B. Most of the high school students taking the dead lan- 

guages do not pursue them long enough to get their 

supposed benefits. 
1. The head of the Latin department at Adelbert Col- 
lege said in 1915 "It is of course foolish for any- 
one to take Latin without Greek," but over half 



BRIEF xix 

a million students in American high schools are 
doing so. 
2. About one third of the students in high schools 
take Latin, but most of them do not take more 
than two years of it. (Lankester, Natural Science 
and the Classical System in Education, p. 201) 

(a) Many never complete one year of it. 

(b) Many take only two years to make the re- 
quirement of the colleges. 

(c) Some high schools are only three year 
schools. 

C. All beautiful or useful thought in the dead languages 
has been well translated. 

1. To know the facts of ancient history it is not 
necessary to learn the dead languages. 

2. Persons who study Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero for 
the knowledge to be obtained from their works, 
invariably do so by reading a translation. 

3. It had never been considered necessary to know 
Latin or Greek to read understandingly the Holy 
Scriptures. 

III. The study of the dead languages is not necessary for nor 
materially helpful to other studies. 
A. It is neither necessary nor helpful to the learned por- 
fessions. 

1. Many of our ablest lawyers, jurists, physicians, 
surgeons, clergymen, engineers, authors, editors, 
business men, etc. never studied any dead language. 

(a) Abraham Lincoln. 

(b) William Shakespeare. 

(c) W. D. Howells. 

(d) T. B. Aldrich. 

2. The fact that the terminology of some of the sci- 
ences and some of the words and phrases used in 
the law are Latin or Greek words does not prove 
that it is necessary or even helpful for one to go 
through the long, dull, dismal, and stupifying 
grind of learning the dead languages in order to 
make a success of one of these sciences or profes- 
sions^ 



BRIEF 

(a) Such Latin phrases as "habeas corpus" "ex- 
post Facto" "in quo warranto" are no more 
difficult to understand that such terms as 
"right of eminent domain." "Garnishee" or 
"legal tender." 

(b) Practically all knowledge of the dead lan- 
guages is so soon forgotten as to make any- 
professional man who has studied the dead 
languages just as much dependent upon his 
dictionary as his associate who never wasted 
any time on them. 

(c) To most scientific and technical terms a 
knowledge of the Latin or Greek root would 
give little meaning and would often cause 
confusion. (Bain, Education as a Science. 
P- 375-6) 

3. Useful and practical studies would be a far better 
preparation for the professions and sciences. 

The study of the dead languages is not necessary nor 
helpful to an elegant and forceful use of English. 
(Bain, Education as a Science, p. 374-8) 
1. Many persons who have used English most ele- 
gantly, forcefulry and most accurately never 
studied a dead language. 

(a) Abraham Lincoln. 

(b) William Shakespeare. 

(c) Henry George. 

(d) W. D. Howells. 

2. The claim that without studying the dead lan- 
guages or at least Latin it is impossible for the 
average person to gain a complete mastery of Eng- 
lish is ridiculously absurd. 

(a) This claim for the dead languages was not 
made until quite recently. 

(b) While this statement has often been made, it 
has never been proved. The Negative asks 
for proof, for some real evidence. 

(c) Opinions do not make proof, especially is 
this true of the biased opinions of financially 
interested parties. 



BRIEF xxt 

(d) Latin and Greek are too unlike English. 

(e) It would be just as reasonable to say that it 
is necessary to study astronomy in order to 
prepare for dentistry. 

(f) When the classical group ruled our schools 
and colleges, it was necessary to take both 
languages throughout the high school and 
college course, and the result was that prac- 
tically no English was taught in the high 
schools until about twenty-five years ago. 

(g) The fact that many English words are de- 
rived from Greek or Latin roots, does not 
prove that it is necessary or even helpful to 
a complete mastery of English for one to 
spend years at the dull drudgery of learning 
the dead languages. 

(v) It might just as well be said that one 
must learn the original Anglo-Saxon 
from which many English words are 
also derived, 
(w) Many English words now have a very 
different meaning than the Latin or 
Greek roots from which they were 
originally derived, 
(x) There are no words in the English lan- 
guage of which any high school boy 
or girl cannot easily and quickly obtain 
the exact meaning, 
(y) Any person who has studied the dead 
languages so soon forgets them that 
they are of very little help in under- 
• standing or using English, 
(z) Latin vocabulary of most students is 
too small to be of real help. 
The only way to learn English so as to have a 
good command of it, is by studying English, 
(a) Nobody uses English elegantly and well un- 
less he has read some of the best works in 
English literature and has associated to some 
extent with educated and cultured people. 



xxii BRIEF 

(b) Nobody writes elegant and forceful English 
unless he has had practice in doing so. 

(c) The student who has taken Latin and Greek 
gives just as much time in high school and 
college to the study of English as the student 
who has never studied a dead language, 
(x) If the study of the dead languages 

were any real help to English, cer- 
tainly the high school courses would be 
so arranged as to require less English 
work of the classical students than of 
others. 
4. The study of Latin at the high school age is very 

injurious to English. (Mackie, Education during 

Adolescence, p. 99 et seq.) 

C. The study of the dead languages is not really helpful, 

much less necessary, to a study of the modern lan- 
guages. 

1. Half of the time spent on the dead language would 
be sufficient to learn a modern language. 

2. Most of the students who learn the dead languages 
thoroughly do not have time to take up the modern 
languages. 

D. The study of the dead languages does not excite the 

intellectual interests of modern students. 

1. It does not lead to interest in other allied studies, 
or to the acquisition of other knowledge. 

2. The dead languages are not interesting or inspir- 
ing in themselves, nor do they excite a student to 
continue his study. 

(a) The study of the dead languages is never 

continued after a student leaves high school 

or college. 

(x) Occasionally we hear it said that some 
person enjoyed reviewing them in his ^_ 
dotage, but who can tell of a particular J 
case where this was true. 

(y) For every case of a person who en- 
joyed reading Homer in his dotage, a 
thousand boys have left high school in 



BRIEF xxiii 

disgust over the dry bones of tKe dead 
languages. 

(z) Both John Adams and Thomas Jeffer- 
son, after they were seventy years of 
age, spent some time on the Greek clas- 
sics and exchanged letters of dissatis- 
faction and disgust. (Adams, A Col- 
lege Fetich) 
(b) Teachers or teaching methods are often 

blamed for making the dead languages dull 

and uninteresting. 

(x) This is most absurd, because the 
teachers of the dead languages as a 
rule are superior teachers, 

(y) Only superhuman power can restore 
life to the dead. 

(z) Teaching methods were criticised by 
Milton, Heine, and have been criticised 
continually ever since. 

IV. The study of the dead languages entails an enormous so- 
cial waste. 
A. It prevents the student from taking important and use- 
ful subjects and getting knowledge which every 
person ought to have. 

1. It is possible to cover only sixteen units in a high 
school course of four years. 

2. Every high school student taking a cultural course 
ought to get at least: 

(a) Four units of English. 

(b) Two units of physical science. 

(c) Two units of biological science. 

(d) Two units of social science. 

(e) Three units of history. 

(f) Three units of mathematics. 

(g) Some modern language might be included 
for those who will make use of it. 

(h) Some practical science. 

3. About half of this must be omitted by the student 
who takes the Latin-Greek course, and one quarter 
of it by the student who takes Latin without 
Greek. 



xxiv BRIEF 

4. If any foreign languages are taken, they should be 
the modern languages, for these have the possi- 
bility of being of some use to the student. 

5. Students taking dead language in high school are 
compelled to give it most of their time and effort 
in their study hours, neglecting the practical and 
useful studies. 

B. The study of the dead languages retards and prevents 

the education of many pupils. 
1. It is a dull and dismal grind that takes a student 
away from the realities of the world and compels 
him to labor tediously at memorizing, conjugating, 
cramming rules of grammar, syntax, meanings of 
words, idioms, and slowly translating bits of an- 
cient writings. 

(a) Many boys leave high school in disgust, 
robbed of their education. (G. Stanley Hall, 
School Review 9:656 Dec. 1901) 

(b) Many pupils do not make progress and 
change their course. 

(c) None of the pupils can consider the study as 
connected with the realities of the world. 

C. The study of the dead languages has retarded the prog- 

ress of civilization. • 

1. The progress of civilization has been enhanced by 
the great inventions, discoveries, and reforms 
made in the fields of science, including the physical 
sciences, that is', chemistry, physics, engineering, 
transportation, communication, mining, agricul- 
ture, etc., and also including social science, that is, 
government, industrial relations, social service, etc. 

2. The study of the dead languages diverts the atten- 
tion of many of the best minds away from these 
things to" the details of ancient history, grammar, 
and philology. 

(a) The grind over the dead languages unfits a 
person for a life of useful service in the 
world. 

(b) The careful student of the dead languages 
cannot be the best type of "a good citizen in 
a twentieth century democracy. 



BRIEF XXV 

(c) He is either a bookworm, or he has lost the 
best of his student hours in the pedagogical 
treadmill of the dead languages. 
3. By turning attention away from the realities of 
the world, the study of the dead languages has 
retarded the progress of civilization by more than 
a century. 
D. The study of the dead languages creates snobbishness 
in education. 

1. It was originally designed in England to create 
gentlemen of leisure, who considered themselves 
above ordinary people and who showed their 
loftiness of mind by the occasional use of a Latin 
quotation. 

2. In our high schools today the "classical" teachers 
and "classical" students assume an attitude of lofty 
superiority and look with contempt upon all who 
waste none of their time on the dead languages. 
(Classical Journal 13: 147 Dec. 1917.) 

3. The better forms of education have been attacked 
and ridiculed for a hundred years by persons 
whose motive was to preserve their own positions 
teaching the dead languages. 

(a) Practical and useful studies have been de- 
nounced as "low utilitarianism" and "a mess 
of potage." 

(b) An organized propaganda has been carried 
on for several years by teachers of the dead 
languages. 

(w) The pamphlet "The Practical Value of 
Latin" By the Classical Association of 
the Atlantic States published in 1915 is 
an example. 

(x) The files of the Classical Journal and 
the Classical weekly contain articles 
telling the benefits of the study of the 
dead languages and giving teachers of 
these subjects ideas as how to carry 
on the work of proselytism (Classical 
Journal 10:267), (Classical Weekly 
5:1, Oct. 7, '11 and 6:210-12 May 17, 
'13.) 



cxvi BRIEF 

(y) Most of the books and magazine arti- 
cles defending the study of the dead 
languages have been written by teach- 
ers of these subjects. 

(z) Personal and individual work has been 

carried on by teachers in an effort to 

persuade or to influence individual 

students to take the dead languages. 

(Lankester, Natural Science and the 

Classical System in Education, p. 202) 

V. Although opinion evidence cannot be given great weight 
in any debate, the preponderance of the able and disin- 
terested opinion is strongly opposed to the study of the 
dead languages. 

A. Opinion evidence is one of the weakest forms of evi- 
dence. 

1. Opinion evidence is admitted in a court of law 
only after the witness has been qualified as an 
expert. 

2. The "best evidence" rule of the law rules out of 
court poorer evidence when the best evidence is 
obtainable. 

(a) Opinion evidence on the value of the study 
of the dead languages can only be construed 
as meaning a total absence of any real proof. 

(b) Opinion evidence on this question can have 
little weight because the dead languages have 
been studied for over three hundred years 
and if the results are as good as claimed, 
then it would be easy to present better evi- 
dence than opinions in their defense. 

3. All opinions of teachers of the dead languages as 
to the value of their study must be considered as 
the biased testimony of persons financially in- 
terested in the subject of the controversy. 

4. Many of the opinions given in the propaganda of 
the Classical associations endorse a "thorough" or 
a "complete" course in Latin and Greek, and not a 
smattering of Latin, which is all that the average 
high school student gets. 



BRIEF xxvii 

B. The opinions of many able and financially disinterested 
persons can be cited against the study of the dead 
languages. 

1. Herbert Spencer, the great English philosopher. 

2. Prof. Alexander Bain. 

3. Charles W. JEliot, former President of Harvard 
University, and one of the greatest of all Amer- 
ican educators. 

4. David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford Junior Uni- 
versity. 

5. Thomas H. Huxley . 

6. Lord Rosebury. 

7. Abraham Flexner, 

8. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University. 

9. H. G. Wells7~the eminent English writer. 

10. Sir E. Ray Lankester, the eminent English sci- 
entist. 

11. Alexander Winchell. 

12. Benjamin Franklin. 

13. Prof. Edward A. Ross. 

14. President Holmes of Drake University. 

15. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

16. - Charles Francis Adams. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

An asterisk (*) proceeding a title means that the article is reprinted 
at least in part in this volume. A dagger (t) is used to indicate a few 
of the other best references. 

Bibliographies 

American Classical League, Publications of. Leaflet 4 p. Dean 

Andrew F. West, President, Princeton, N. J. 
Askew, John B. Pros and cons. G. Routledge & Sons. 1908. 

p. 104. Greek compulsory in the universities. Syllabi and references. 
Bennett, Charles E. and Bristol, George P. The teaching of 

Latin and Greek in the secondary school. Longmans, Green 

& Co. 1901. 
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Classified bibliography. Type- 
written. 1920. 
Clark University Library, Publications of. 4:33-4. D '14. Latin 

in the high school and methods of teaching it. Joseph V. 

O'Connell. 
Game, Josiah B. Teaching high school Latin. University of 

Chicago Press. 1916. 

p. 7. Summary of Results. Syllabus. 
Matson, Henry. References for literary workers. A. C. Mc- 

Clurg & Co. 1907. 

p. 252-8. The classics and a liberal education. Syllabi and references. 
Rowton, Frederic. How to conduct a debate. Fitzgerald Pub. 

Co. 

p. 190. Which are of the greater importance in education, the classics 
or mathematics. Syllabi and references. 

p. 216. Is a classical education essential to an American gentleman? 
references. 

General References 
Books and Pamphlets 

Butler, Nicholas M. The meaning of education. Macmillan & 

Co. 1898. 

p. 172-7. Greek and Latin. 
Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton & Co. 1910. 

p. 32-4. Latin literature in the church. Paul Lejay. 



xxx BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Eliot, Charles W. Educational reforms. Century Co. 1898. 
Fletcher, Alfred E. Sonnenschein's Cyclopedia of education. 

Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. 1906. 

p. 59-61. Classical studies. 
John, Walton C. Requirements for the bachelor's degree. U.S. 

Bureau of Education. 1920. 
Kiddle, Henry and Schem, Alexander J. Cyclopedia of educa- 
tion. Sampson Low & Co. 1877. 

p. 139-42. Classical studies. 
fParker, Charles S. On the history of classical education in 

essays on a liberal education. Macmillan 1867. 

Reprinted as Chap. II. p. 14-90 in Sir Ray Lankester's Natural Science 
and the Classical System in Education. William Heinemann. 19 18. 

Ruediger, William C. The principles of education. Houghton, 
Mifflin Co. 1910. 

Sandys, John E. A history of classical scholarship. G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons. 1909. ^ 

*Walsh, James J. Education, How old the new. Fordham Uni- 
versity Press. 191 1. 

Periodicals 

American Journal of Science. 15 : 328-36. 1828. Report on a 

course of liberal education, Yale College Faculty. 
Atlantic Monthly. 101:788-98. Je. '08. The case of Greek. 

Albert G. Keller, 
f Atlantic Monthly. 121 : 222-31. The case for humility. R. K. 

Hack. 
Blackwood's Magazine. 169:529-35. Ap. '01. The jeopardy of 

Greek. H. W. Auden. 
Blackwood's Magazine. 179:667-75. My. '06. Grammar to the 

wolves. P. A. W. Henderson. 
Century. 6:203-12. Je. '84. What is a liberal education. Charles 

W. Eliot. 
Chautauquan. 43 : 200-1. My. '06. Classical language and edu- 
cation. 
Classical Weekly. 10:217-20. My. 21, '17. Classical ideals and 

American life. Albert Shaw. 
Current Opinion. 63:117-18. Ag. '17. The new world-war that 

rages around Greek and Latin literature. 
Current Opinion. 64:114-15. F. '18. Practical importance of the 

war between science and the classics. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxi 

Dial. 56 : 94-5. F. 1, '14. Revivifying the classic languages. 

Nathan H. Dole. 
Education. 30:500-8. Ap. '10. Secondary education. B. F. 

Harding. 
Educational Review. 32:461-72. D. '06. The position of Latin 

and Greek in American education. Francis W. Kelsey. 
Educational Review. 33 : 36-45. Ja. '07. Humanistic versus real- 
istic education. Friedrich Paulsen. 
Educational Review. 33 : 162-76. F. '07. Latin and Greek in our 

'courses of study. Francis W. Kelsey. 
Educational Review. 34 : 144-50. S. '07. Classical studies. T. E. 

Page. 
Educational Review. 41:489-98. My. '11. The poor results in 

Latin teaching. J. Remsen Bishop. 
Educational Review. 53:483-9. My. '17. Function of Latin in 

the curriculum. J. Crosby Chapman. 
Fortnightly Review. 9:95-105. Ja. '68. Shall we continue to 

teach Latin and Greek? T. Fowler. 
Harper's Monthly. 139 : 761-4. O '19. The classics and the 

practical argument. F. M. Colby. 
fHarvard Graduates Magazine. 28:69-74. S. '19. Study of the 

ancients. Albert Bushnell Hart. 
Independent. 35 : 1009-10. Ag 9, 83. Mr. Adams's arraignment 

of the Greek language. 
Independent. 35 : 1645. D. 27, '83. The university of Berlin and 

the Greek question. 
Independent. 55 : 47-8. Ja. 1, '03. Classics and the teachers of 

them. 
Independent. 82:59. Ap. 12, '15. Latin or science, 
flndependent. 99: 185. Ag. 9, '19. An educational hope. Frank- 
lin H. Giddings. 
Literary Digest. 55 : 31-2. D\ 8, '17. The classics on trial for 

their lives in Britain. 
Nation. 83 : 6. Jl. 5, '06. Practical side of the classics. 
Nation. 94:354-5. Ap. 11, '12. An apostle of Greek. 
Nation. 104:676. Je. 7, '17. The battle of the classics. 
Nation. 108:112. Ja. 25, '19. Language, literature, or history. 
National Educational Association, Proceedings and Addresses, 

1908. p. 584-91. A shifting of ideals respecting the efficiency 

of formal culture studies for all pupils. J. Remsen Bishop. 



xxxii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

New Republic. 6: 295. Ap. 15, '16. Books and things. 

New Republic. 13: 177-8. D. 15, '17. Prudence and the classics. 
Emily J. Putnam. 

Outlook. 107 : 952-3. Ag. 22, '14. Classical studies. 

Outlook 107:798-805. Ag. I, '14. That bad education. 

Outlook. 107 : 957-62. Ag. 22, '14. The classics and a bad edu- 
cation. 

Outlook. 121 : 365. F. 26, '19. Boys and Latin. A. W. Shepherd. 

Outlook. 122 : 463. Jl. 23, '19. Classics and culture. 

Outlook. 122:498. Jl. 30, '19. The classics and reconstruction. 

Popular Science Monthly. 70: 530-41. Je. '07. The acquisition of 
language and its relations to thought. Alexander Hill. 

fPopular Science Monthly. 79:369-84. O. '11. Language study 
and language psychology. E. W. Fay. 

Princeton Review, n. s. 13 : 127-40. Mr. '84. Our colleges be- 
fore the country. William G. Sumner. 

Putnam's Monthly. 3 : 418-24. '08. A classical education. Emily 
J. Putnam. 

School and Society. 5 : 608-12. My. 6, '17. The classicist or the 
utilitarian. Walter H. Siple. 

School and Society. 7: 174-8. F. 9, '18. Classical studies. Gon- 
zalez Lodge. 

School and Society. 8 : 61-8. Jl. 20, '18. The inaugural address 
of the president of Smith College. William A. Neilson. 

School and Society. 8:171-3. Ag. 10, '18. Humanistic studies 
and their relation to liberal education. David Snedden. 

School and Society. 9:119-28. Ja. 25, '19. The present status 
of Greek and Latin as requirements for the A. B. degree in 
American colleges and universities. Gregory D. Walcott. 

*School Review. 14 : 660-3. N. '06. Classical literature through 
translation. Edward O. Sisson. . 

School Review. 20 : 254-61. Ap. '12. The status of Greek. A. A. 
Trever. 

School -Review. 21 : 618-26. N. '13. Greek and Latin in the 
schools of Belgium. John G. Winter. 

School Review. 22:45-7. Ja. '14. Effect of the non-requirement 
of Latin for graduation upon the Latin classes of the high 
schools. W. R. Pate. 

Unpopular Review. 5:281-93. Ap. '16. "Efficiency" and effi- 
ciency. William C. Greene. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxiii 

Westminster Review. 162 : 92-9. Jl. '04. Greek and Latin as a 

modern study. M. E. Robinson. 
Yale Review n. s. 6: 135-49. O. '16. The case of Latin. A. G. 

Keller. 
Yale Review n. s. 6 : 150-66. O. '16. Greek in the new university. 

Thomas D. Goodell. 

Affirmative References 
Books and Pamphlets 

Adams, James. The vitality of Platonism and other essays. 

University Press. 191 1. 

Chap. 6. The moral and intellectual value of classical education. 
American Classical League. Dean Andrew F. West, President, 

Princeton, N. J. 

Among the pamphlets printed or reprinted and sold "slightly below 
cost" are: 

Why study Latin, Willis A. Ellis. 

Our need of the Classics, John H. Finley. 

Greek in English, Rev. Francis P. Donnelly. 

High Schools and Classics, Frederick Irland. 

The study of Latin and Greek in a democracy, Alfred Croiset. 

An engineer's view of classical study, John N. Vedder. 

Why the full Latin requirement should be kept, Latin departments 
of Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley Colleges. 

Ashmore, Sidney G. The Classics and modern training. G. P. 

Putnam's Sons. 1905. 
Babbitt, Irving. Literature and the American college. Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co. 1908. 
Bennett, Charles E., and Bristol, George P. The teaching of 

Latin and Greek in secondary schools. Longmans, Green & 

Co. 1901. 

Chap. I. The justification of Latin as an instrument of secondary 
education. 

Bristed, Charles A. Five years in an English University. G; P. 

Putnam & Sons. 1873. 

p. 476-505. The advantages of classical studies, particularly in ref- 
erence to the youth of our country. 

*Bryce, James. The worth of ancient literature to the modern 

world, General Education Board. 1917. 
Byars, William V. The practical value of the Classics. Nixon- 

Jories Co. 1901. 
Chamberlain, D. H. Not a college fetich. Willard Small. 1884. 
Clarke, John. The school and other educators. Longmans 

Green & Co. 1918. 

Chap. 10. The place of the classics. 



xxxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY 

*Classical Association of the Atlantic States. The practical 

value of Latin. 1915. 
Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Various 

pamphlets issued by the publicity committee. 
deTocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Colonial Press. 

1900. 

Second Part, First Book, Chp. XV. (Vol. 2, p. 65-7). The study of 
Greek and Latin literature peculiarly useful in democratic communities. 

Forbes. Charles H. The sham argument against Latin. Class- 
ical Association of New England. 1917- 
Fouillee, Alfred. Education from a national standpoint. D. Ap- 

pleton & Co. 1892. 

Book 3, p. 94-135. The classical humanities from the national stand- 
point. 
Game, Josiah B. Teaching High School Latin. University of 

Chicago Press. 1916. 

Chap. 1. Latin's immediate service in education. 

Chap. 2. Latin's larger service in education and in life. 

Chap. 3. Classical studies on the defensive. 

Chap. 16. Questions with answers and suggestions. 

Hamilton, William. Discussions on philosophy and literature. 

Harper & Bros. i860. 

p. 325-44. On the conditions of classical learning. 
Harrington, Karl P. Live issues in classical study. Ginn & Co. 

1910. 
Jebb, Richard C. Humanities in education. Macmillan & Co. 

1899. 
Jebb, Richard C. Essays and addresses. Cambridge University 

Press. 1907. 

P- 545-9- O n present tendencies in classical studies. 

p. 609-23. An address delivered at the Mason College. 

Johnston, Charles H. High school education. Scribners. 1912. 

Chap. 13, p. 257-66, Latin. 
fKelsey, Francis W. Latin and Greek in American education. 

Macmillan & Co. 1911. 
Kiddle, Henry and Schem, Alexander J. Cyclopedia of educa- 
tion. E. Steiger. i877- 

p. 139-42. Classical studies. 
Knox, Vicesimus. The works of Rev. V. Knox. J. Mawman 

(London). 1834. 
Laurie, S. S. Lectures on language and the linguistic method in 

the school. James Thiu (Edinburgh). 1893. 

Chap. 9. p. 126-35. Reasons for teaching Latin. 

Supplement, p. 179-97. Language vs. science in the school. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxv 

■[Livingstone, R. W. A Defense of classical education. Mac- 

millan & Co. 1816. 
Mill, John Stuart. Dissertations and discussions. Henry Holt 

& Co. 1874. 

Vol. 4. p. 332-407. Inaugural address. 

^Ministry of Reconstruction (British). The Classics in British 
education. 1919. 

Murray, Gilbert. The religion of a man of letters. Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 1918. 

Owen, William B. The humanities of the education of the fu- 
ture. Sherman, French & Co. 

Osier, Sir William. The old humanities and the new science. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1920. 

Rouse, W. H. D. Classical work and method in the twentieth 
century. Nicola Zanichelli. Bologna. 1908. 

Rouse, W. H. D. Machines or mind. Wm. Heineman. 1816. 

fSabin, Frances E. The relation of Latin to practical life. Mad- 
ison, Wis. 1916. 

Taylor, Samuel H. Classical study, Its value illustrated by ex- 
tracts from the writings of eminent scholars. W. F. Draper. 
1870. 

Thring, Edward. Theory and practice of teaching. Cambridge 
University Press. 1883. 

Urquhart, D. H. Commentaries on classical learning. London. 
1803. 

fWest, Andrew F. The value of the Classics. Princeton Uni- 
versity Press. 1917. 

West, Andrew F. The war and education. Princeton University 
Press. 

Wickersham, James P. Methods of instruction. J. B. Lippin- 
cott & Co. 1865. 
p. 275-80. Instruction in the dead languages. 

Periodicals 

American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Transactions of. 
28: 1103-31. Jl. 1, '09. The value of the Classics in engineer- 
ing education. Charles P. Steinmetz et al. 

American Institute of Instruction, Lectures, 1867. p. 81-7. Place 
of science and the classics in a liberal education. Albert 
Harkness. 



xxxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY 

American Institute of Instruction, Lectures, 1876. p. 39-50. 

Moral instruction and discipline in the study of the classical 

languages and literatures. M. H. Buckham. 
Arbitrator. 1:3-6, II. S. '18. The immortal conflict. Andrew 

F. West. 
Atlantic Monthly. 51 : 171-9. F. '83. Herbert Spencer's theory 

of education. E. R. Sill. 
Atlantic Monthly. 53 : 71-9. Ja. '84. The study of Greek. A. P. 

Peabody. 
tAtlantic Monthly. 119:793-801. Je. '17; 120:94-104. Jl. '17. The 

assault on humanism. Paul Shorey. 
fAtlantic Monthly. 124 : 47-53. Jl '19. High schools and Classics. 

Frederick Ireland. 
Bibliotheca Sacra. 42 : 327-50. Ap. '85. Greek among required 

studies. William G. Frost. 
fBlackwood's Magazine. 109 : 182-94. F. '71. Lord Lyttelton's 

letter to the Vice Chancellor of Oxford on the study of Greek. 
Chautauquan. 43 : 121-32. Ap. '06. The influence of the Classics 

on American literature. Paul Shorey. 
Chautauquan. 43 : 141-3. Ap. '06. The influence of the Classics 

in the lives of well known moderns. Vincent V. Beede. 
Classical Journal. 1 :35-6. Ja. '06. M. Ingres on the value of 

classical education. 
Classical Journal. 2 : 5-22. N. '06. Our problem and a platform. 

Thomas D. Goodell. 
Classical Journal. 5 : 232-6. Mr. '10. The aims of classical train- 
ing. J. J. Schlicher. 
Classical Journal. 5 : 322-7. My. '10. The classics and the pupil. 

J. J. Schlicher. 
Classical Journal. 7:174-80. Ja. '12. Culture and cult. Charles 

H. Forbes. 
Classical Journal. 7:349-51. My. '12. An Exhibit in answer to 

the high school boy's question; "What's the use of Latin?" 

Frances E. Sabin. 
Classical Journal. 8:230-3. Mr. '13. What's the use of Latin. 

Frances E. Sabin. 
fClassical Journal. 9:94-101. D. '13. The value of the Classics 

to students of English. Joseph V. Denney. 
Classical Journal. 10 : 126-37. D. '14. The practical bearing of 

high school Latin. H. R. Fairclough. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxvii 

Classical Journal. 11:208-15. Ja. '16. The Latin in English, or 

interest that will stick. M. A. Leiper. 
Classical Journal. 13 : 309-13. F. '18. The stupidest of losses. 
Classical Weekly. 1: 186-8. Ap. II, '08. Classics in the modern 

school. W. H. D. Rouse. 
Classical Weekly. 1 : 194-6. Ap. 25, '08. Classics in the modern 

school. W. H. D. Rouse. 
Classical Weekly. 2:74-7. D. '^9, '08. Mr. Asquith on classical 

culture. 
Classical Weekly. 3 : 18-22. O. 2, '09. The value of the Classics ; 

an outsiders view. W. W. Comfort. 
Classical Weekly. 3:175-6. Ap. 2, '10. On the Value of the 

Classics in Engineering Education. Charles J. Steinmetz. 
Classical Weekly. 4:211-13. My. 13, '11. Why Study Greek? 

Charles H. Weller. 
Classical Weekly. 6 : 146-9. Mr. 15, '13. The Classics. George 

M. Lightfoot. 
Classical Weekly. 8 : 2-4. O. 3, '14. Liberal Studies in the high 

school curriculum. Katherine M. Puncheon. 
Classical Weekly. 10 : 8. O. 2, '16. Three early defenses of the 

Classics. William Chislett. 
Classical Weekly. 11: 129-31. F. 25, '18. A plea for the Classics. 
Contemporary Review. 34 : 802-15. Mr. '79- On the worth of a 

classical education. Bonamy Price. 
Contemporary Review. 117:673-81. Ap. '20. The reconstruction 

of public school education. E. C. E. Owen. 
Dial. 66:390-3. Ap. '19. University reconstruction and the 

Classics. Royal C. Nemiah. 
Eclectic Magazine. 99 : 550-9. O. '82. Literature and Science 

Mathew Arnold. 
f Education. 23 : 257-69. Ja. '03. The advantages which accrue 

from a Classical education. Caroline R. Gaston. 
Education. 23 : 347-55. F. '03. The advantages which accrue 

from a Classical education. Caroline R. Gaston. 
Education. 31:652-6. Je. '11. Some uses of the Classics to a 

modern student. Preston S. Moulton. 
fEducation. 32:51-7. S. '11. A brief for the Classics. Edward 

P. Davis. 
Education. 33:11-8, S. '12. Shall Latin go? Alice Ranlett. 



xxxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Education. 37:440-4. Mr. '17. More than two years of Latin. 
Carrie B. Allen. 

fEducation. 38:668-84. My. '18. "The modern school." Paul 
Shorey. 

Educational Review. 17:313-6. Ap. '99. A brief for Latin. 
William T. Harris. 

Educational Review. 22:162-79. S. '01. Imagination in the 
study of the Classics. Gonzalez Lodge. 

Educational Review. 23:407-19. Ap. '02. The Classics in mod- 
ern education. William Baird. 

Educational Review. 29:185-90. F. '05. A plea for Caesar. 
Katharine Darrin. 

f Educational Review. 33 : 59-76. Ja. '07. The value of Latin and 
Greek as educational instruments. Francis W. Kelsey. 

Educational Review. 39:342-50. Ap. '10. The case of Greek 
again. Hamilton F. Allen. 

Educational Review. 42:304-7. O. '11. Business men and the 
Classics. 

Educational Review. 43 : 449-60. My. '12. May the modern lan- 
guages be regarded as a satisfactory substitute for the Class- 
ics. C. F. Kayser. 

Educational Review. 47 : 279-90. Mr. '14. Greek at Princeton. 
Andrew F. West. 

Educational Review. 49: 37-47. Ja. '15. The teaching of English 
and the study of the Classics. Lane Cooper. 

Educational Review. 52: 174-82. S. '16. The purpose of college 
Greek. Virginia C. Gildersleeve. 

fEducational Review. 52:501-6. D. '16. Measurements of ef- 
fect of Latin on English vocabulary of high school students 
in commercial courses. Albert S. Perkins. 

Educational Review. 53 : 248-64. Mr. '17. Some reflections on 
the liberal curriculum. Grace Goodale. 

Educational Review. 54:177-83. S. '17. Is American higher 
education improving. Nicholas Murray Butler. 

Educational Review. 54:293-306. O. '17. Classics and the re- 
former. H. C. Nutting. 

fEducational Review. 54:433-8. D. '17. Our Birthright or a 
mess of pottage. Andrew F. West. 

Educational Review. 54:439"So. D. '17. The passing of the 
Classics. Grace H. Macurdy. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxix 

fEducational Review. 54:500-3. D. '17. Is the study of Latin 
advantageous to the study of English? M. Theresa Dallam. 

Educational Review. 56:117-32. S. '18. Latin as a utility. Al- 
bert S. Perkins. 

Educational Review. 56:230-54. O. '18. Our common Latin 
heritage. Frank G. Moore. 

Educational Review. 57:129-40. F. '19. Post Bellum Latin. 
Frank G. Moore. 

Educational Review. 57:141-52. F. '19. The humanities after 
the war. Andrew F. West. 

Educational Review. 59:113-22. F. '20. Education versus ap- 
prenticeship. John M. Vedder. 

Engineering Magazine. 46:97-9. O. '13. The Classics in engi- 
neering education. Charles P. Steinmetz. 

Fortnightly Review. 31:290-300. '79. Shall we give up Greek? 
Edward A. Freeman. 

fFortnightly Review. 78: 866-80. N. '02. Are the Classics to go? 
J. P. Postgate. 

Fortnightly Review. 98: (n. s. 92) 427-37. S. '12. The Classical 
spirit. H. Belloc. 

*Fortnightly Review. 107 : 551-66. Ap. 2, '17. The worth of an- 
cient literature to the modern world. James Bryce. 

Harvard Graduates Magazine. 27 : 171-5. D. '81. In behalf of 
the Classics. Fred B. Lund. 

Independent. 36 : 336-7. Mr. 13, '84. The Popular Science 
Monthly and the Classics. 

Independent. 55 : 104-5. J a - 8, '03. The Classics and the historic 
sense. 

Independent. 62 : 107-8. Ja. 10, '07. Scientific versus Classical 
education. 

International Review. 1 : 781-95. N. '74. Study of the Greek and 
Latin Classics. Charles Elliott. 

Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine. 7:147-56. Mr. '19. The fu- 
ture place of the humanities in education. Kirby F. Smith. 

Literary Digest. 55:32 N. 10, '17. How war saves the Classics. 

Living Age. 154 : 579-88. S. 9, '82. Literature and Science. 
Mathew Arnold. 

Living Age. 266:433-7. Ag. 13, '10. Humanistic education not 
without Latin. W. H. D. Rouse. 

Living Age. 268: 103-6. Ja. 14, '11. The place of the Classics in 
secondary education. W. H. D. Rouse. 



xl BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Living Age. 275 : 144-52. O. 19, '12. The Classical spirit. Hilaire 
Belloc. 

*Living Age. 293 : 522-34. Je. 2, '17. The worth of ancient liter- 
ature to the modern world. James Bryce. > 

Living Age. 302 : 37-41, Jl. 5, '19. The humanities in education. 
Lord Charnwood. 

fMichigan Alumnus. 13 : 13-23 and 60-70. O. and N. '06. A 
symposium on the value of the humanistic, particularly class- 
ical, studies as a preparation for the study of medicine and of 
engineering from the point of view of these professions. 
Francis W. Kelsey et al. 

Nation. 92:164-5. F. 16, '11. Greek and Science. Charles D. 
Adams. 

Nation. 92: 213-14. Mr. 2, '11. Science and the Classics. H. H. 
Yeames. 

Nation. 93:210-11. S. 7, '11. The efficiency of the student of 
Greek. J. W. Hewitt. 

Nation. 95:229-30. S. 12, '12. Learning English thorugh the 
Classics. W. H. D. Rouse. 

Nation. 96 : 465. My. 8, '13. Latin and modern languages. 
Philo M. Buck. 

Nation. 102:705. Je. 29, '16. Dr. Flexner's modern school. 
H. R. Fairclough. 

Nation. 104:122-3. F. 1, '17. Bryce on education. 

Nation. 108 : 13-4. Ja. 4, '19. The modern world and the Latin 
classroom. Richard M. Gummere. 

Nation. 108:354. Mr. 8, '19. Another plea for the Classics. 
Jacques W. Redway. 

Nation. 109:11-2. Jl. 5, '19. Measuring the immeasurable. 
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Nation. 109:163. Ag. 9, '19. The great laboratory. 

National Educational Association, Proceedings and Addresses, 

1873. p. 131-40. Classical studies. Edward S. Joynes 
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1874. P- 187-204. A defense of Classical studies. James D. 
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National Educational Association. Proceedings and Addresses. 

1902. p. 462-7. Round table conference. Lafayette Bliss et al. 
National Educational Association. Proceedings and Addresses. 

1903. p. 470-6. Classical conference. Henry W. Callahan 
et al. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xli 

New Englander. 35:222-50. Ap. '76. The value of Classical 
studies. Daniel H. Chamberlain. 

fNineteenth Century. 12:216-30. Ag. '82. Literature and sci- 
ence. Mathew Arnold. 

Nineteenth Century. 68: 1082-6. D. 'io. The place of the Class- 
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Nineteenth Century. 85 : 927-42. My. '19. The Classics and 
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fNorth American Review. *li : 413-23, O. 1820. The study of 
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fNorth American Review. 101 : 578-84. O. '65. Classical and sci- 
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fNorth American Review. 104 : 610-8. Ap. '67. Classical and 
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Outlook. 107:285-91. Je. 6, '14. That bad education. 

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f Princeton Review n. s. 12 : 105-28. S '83. A college fetich. Noah 
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St. Mary's College Bulletin (St. Mary's, Kansas). 2:8-36. Ja. 
'06. Study of the Classics. 



xlii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

fSt. Mary's College Bulletin (St. Mary's, Kansas). 6:3-24. Ja. 

'10. Popular errors about Classical studies. Rev. Thomas E. 

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Andrew F. West. 
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relation to modern life. G. George H. Locke. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xliii 

School Review. 13 : 441-57. Je. '05. The nature of culture 

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son. 



xliv - BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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most worth. 



SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE 
STUDY OF LATIN AND GREEK 



INTRODUCTION 

The classical system of education may be said to date from 
the fall of Constantinople in 1453. When the eastern capital was 
taken by the Turks, the scholars fled and scattered over west- 
ern Europe, carrying with them many ancient manuscripts, which 
contained, locked up in the dead languages, the best of the 
knowledge and the literature that then existed in the world. 
Through the next hundred years the study of the ancient class- 
ics, then called the new learning, was slowly, often reluctantly, 
accepted as the basis of education. It was the Jesuit Fathers 
who first proved to the world the educational value of the study 
of Latin and Greek. 

To England, and from England to America, the classical sys- 
tem spread. The institutions of higher education in this country 
were truly classical until quite recently. As a rule both Latin 
and Greek were required for admission to college and were pre- 
scribed studies in college. From the founding of Harvard Col- 
lege in 1636 until past the middle of the nineteenth century a 
College course was made up very largely of the study of Latin, 
Greek, Ancient History, Philology, and Mathematics. 

Shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century the de- 
mand for modernized higher education began to affect the cur- 
ricula of American colleges and universities. The Morrill Act, 
approved by President Lincoln on July 2, 1862, provided that 
the Federal Government should give a tract of land to any state 
that would maintain at least one "College where the leading ob- 
jects shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical 
studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in 
such manner as the legislature of the State may respectively pre- 
scribe in order to promote the liberal and practical education 
of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions 



2 SELECTED ARTICLES 

of life." The older colleges slowly adjusted themselves to the 
new competition and to the popular demands for modern edu- 
cation by the gradual adoption of the elective system and by de- 
creasing the amount of the dead languages required for admis- 
sion or prescribed during the college course. At the close of the 
first decade of the twentieth century many of our colleges and 
universities require no dead language study either for admission 
or for graduation, while scarcely any hold to the old require- 
ments. 

Latin is now being studied by about two fifths of the students 
in our high schools and academies and by a very much smaller 
percentage of the students in the colleges and universities. 
Greek, on the other hand, has practically disappeared from our 
educational system, being now studied by less than one per cent 
of the students in our secondary schools. The following table, 
arranged from figures given in the report of the U. S. Commis- 
sioner of Education for 1916 (p. 487-9), shows these facts as 
regards the public high schools in America during the past thirty 
years : 

AMERICAN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS 







Number 


Number 


Per cent 


Per cent 




Total 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Year 


Students 


Latin 


Greek 


Latin 


Greek 


1890 


202,963 


70,411 


6,202 


34-69 


3-05 


189S 


350,099 


153,950 


10,859 


43-97 


3-io 


1900 


530,425 


262,767 


14,813 


50.61 


2.85 


1905 


679,702 


341,248 


10,002 


50.21 


1.47 


1910 


739,143 


362,548 


5,5n 


49-05 


•75 


1915 


i,i65,495 


434,925 


3,35i 


37-32 


.29 



Although the private high schools in 1915 had less than one 
tenth of the total high school enrollment, still in that year they 
were giving instruction in Greek to more than twice as many 
students as were the public high schools, as is shown in the fol- 
lowing table. 

PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 







Number 


Number 


Per cent 


Per cent 




Total 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Year 


Students 


Latin 


Greek 


Latin 


Greek 


1890 


94,93i 


29,733 


6,667 


31-32 


7.02 


1895 


u8,347 


51,056 


11,300 


43-14 


9-55 


1900 


188,816 


52,089 


10,056 


46.92 


9-77 


1905 


107,207 


49,819 


7,156 


46.47 


6.67 


19 10 


78,510 


42,954 


5,228 


54-71 


6.61 


1915 


125,692 


69,060 


7,320 


54-94 


5.82 



These two tables may be combined to produce the following 
statement : 



LATIN AND GREEK 



PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOLS 







Number 


Number 


Per cent 


Per cent 




Total 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Studying 


Year 


Students 


Latin 


Greek 


Latin 


Greek 


1890 


297,894 


100,144 


12,869 


33-62 


4-32 


189S 


468,446 


205,006 


22,159 


43-76 


4-73 


1900 


719,241 


314,856 


24,869 


49-47 


3-95 


1905 


786,909 


391,067 


17,158 


49.69 


2.18 


1910 


8i7,6S3 


405,502 


io,739 


49-59 


1. 31 


1915 


1,291,187 


503,985 


10,671 


39-03 


.83 



From these figures we see that more than ninety-nine per cent 
of the high school pupils in America are not studying Greek, and 
that more than sixty per cent of them are not taking Latin. It 
is unfortunate that similar figures for the colleges and universi- 
ties are not available, and that these figures should begin with 
so late a date as 1890. Were it possible to give figures covering 
both the high schools and the colleges for the past hundred years, 
they would tell a most interesting story. 

The following table gives the percentage of students in the 
public and private high schools combined who were studying 
each of the subjects 'named during the years stated. It is the 
best data available on this point, but it does -not by any means 
convey to the average mind an accurate idea. Rather it seems 
to give the impression that in 1915, for instance, about one half 
of the students enrolled were taking the algebra offered in the 
schools, about two fifths were taking the . Latin offered, and 
about one fourth the geometry. Latin is usually a four year 
study while algebra and geometry are usually one and a half 
year studies, but only one year studies in some schools. If a 
high school had just four hundred students, and these were 
equally divided with one hundred in each of the four years, and 
if each student took at the appointed time the full four years of 
Latin and the full year and a half of algebra and geometry, then 
that school would appear in the following table with these re- 
sults; Latin 100 per cent, Geometry 50 per cent, Algebra 50 
per cent, while the fact is that each -student is taking all of each 
of these subjects that the school gives. In other words, the max- 
imum percentage that geometry or algebra could make in such 
a table is somewhat over fifty as the number of first and second 
year students is always more than half of the total enrollment. 
When this table states that the percentage of students taking Eng- 
lish Literature was 56.07 in 1915, it does not mean that only about 



4 SELECTED ARTICLES 

half of the students are taking English literature, but rather that 
the average student takes it only during about half of his course. 



PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS IN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 
HIGH SCHOOLS TAKING THE STUDIES NAMED 



1890 

English literature 

Rhetoric 

History 27.83 

Algebra 42.77 

Latin 33.62 

Vocal Music 

Geometry 20.07 

German 11.48 

Drawing 

Physical geography .... 

Physics 21.36 

Domestic economy. . * .. 

Manual training 

French 9.41 

Physiology 

Botany 

Civil government 

Chemistry 9.62 

Civics 

Agriculture 

General biology 

Bookkeeping 

Zoology 

Spanish 

Trigonometry 

Psychology 

Industrial 

Greek 4.32 

Geology 

Astronomy 



189S 

3i-3i 
34-65 
52.40 
43.76 

24.51 
12.58 

22.44 
22.15 



9-77 
28.03 



3-25 
3-35 

4-73 
5.52 
5-27 



1900 
41.19 
37-70 
37.80 
55-08 
49-97 

26.75 
15-06 



10.43 
26.96 



21.09 
8.00 



2.42 
3.19 

3-95 
4.02 
3-43 



1905 
48.14 
47-30 
40.50 
56.43 
49.69 

27.84 
20.34 

21.05 
15.66 



11.40 
21.84 

17.85 
7.04 



2.18 
2.62 
1.71 



1910 
57-05 
56.59 
55-67 
56.92 
49-59 

30.87 
23.60 

19.14 

14-79 

4.14 

11.70 
15-76 
16.34 
15-99 
7-13 

4-55 



7.88 

-65 

2.18 

1-35 

1.31 

1.38 
.88 



1915 

56.07 

55-6i 

51.46 

49.26 

39-03 

32.19 

26.80 

24.19 

23.04 

14.66 

14.28 

12.69 

10.64 

10.54 

9.94 

9-15 

8.81 

7-63 

7.20 

6.92 

6.61 

3-29 

3-24 

2.T2 
1.74 

1-43 

1. 12 

.83 

•59 

•45 



Would a wise choice of studies in high school and colleges 
now include Latin and Greek? Is the study of the ancient 
classics still the best form of a liberal education, or is it totally 
unsuited to the educational needs of the twentieth century? 
Does the study of the dead languages give a superior form of 
mental training, one that is the best foundation and preparation 
for the study of the professions and the sciences? Is it indis- 
pensable to a thorough understanding and a fluent command of 
good English? Is it, indeed, our "birthright," as the Dean of 
the Graduate School at Princeton University puts it. Or is it, 
on the other hand, a dull and dismal grind that tends to unfit 
a person for a successful or useful career, a process of "Wear- 
ing away the energies of youth in mental gymnastics" as Prof. 
Edward A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin characterizes 
classical education, a study from which "The average American 
high school boy gets less than out of any other study in the cur- 



LATIN AND GREEK 5 

riculum" as David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford 
Junior University wrote of Latin a few years ago? 

It is an old, old controversy, so old that Rev. Sydney Smith 
said in the Edinburgh Review one hundred eleven years ago 
(October 1809) in a review of Edgeworth's Professional Edu- 
cation, after he had agreed with the author that the main fault 
in the then existing system of education was "Too much Latin 
and Greek," that "We are well aware that nothing very new 
can remain to be said upon a topic so often debated." The wis- 
dom of studying the dead languages has always been more or 
less of an open question. Only slowly and reluctantly was the 
system introduced, and practically ever since it has been subject 
to periodical attacks of more or less severe criticism. It was 
two hundred years ago (Feb. 8, 1720), that Peter Burman on 
quitting the rectorship of the University of Leyden, delivered his 
famous "Oratio in humanitatis studia," the English title of which 
is "Oration against the studies of humanity, showing that the 
learned languages, History, Eloquence and Critik are not only 
useless, but also dangerous to the study of law, physick, philos- 
ophy and above all, of divinity, to which last poetry is a special 
help." Benjamin Franklin is named as another of the early op- 
ponents of the classical system. In 1866 Herbert Spencer pub- 
lished his great work on education with its vigorous attack upon 
the classical system and its recommendation of science as the 
proper basis of education. At the commencement exercises of 
Harvard University in 1883 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., de- 
livered his famous Phi Beta Kappa oration entitled, "A College 
Fetich," in which he said that he had been handicapped in his 
life work by his classical education at Harvard, that in requiring 
its students to devote so much time to Latin and Greek the col- 
lege stood in the position of a parent whose child asked for bread 
and was given a stone. In 1912 the United States Commissioner 
of Education said in his annual report, "The current educational 
Criticism considers Latin as distinctly unnecessary in a people's 
school." Charles W. Eliot, one of America's greatest educators, 
Abraham Flexner, H. G. Wells, President G. Stanley Hall, and 
Thomas H. Huxley are among the others who consider both 
Greek and Latin as non-essentials. 

These are only a few of the hundreds who have sharply 
criticised the classical system, and every criticism has brought 
forth brilliant and able replies from such men as John Stuart 



6 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Mill, James Russell Lowell, James Bryce, William E. Gladstone, 
Mathew Arnold, and hundreds of those who are or have been 
engaged in teaching the classics, among the most prominent of 
whom may be mentioned Andrew F. West, Paul Shorey, Francis 
W. Kelsey, Frances E. Sabin, Josiah B. Game, R. W. Livingstone, 
Gilbert Murray, W. H. D. Rouse, and H. C. Nutting. 

For generations and centuries the controversy has continued. 
Although the classics have slowly but surely lost ground during 
the past half century, nevertheless there is still "much that may 
be said on both sides." 

In few subjects for debate is it so important to make sure of 
the force and validity of the arguments, as it is in any debate on 
the value of the study of the dead languages. It seems unneces- 
sary to say that a mere assertion without proof does not make an 
argument, and yet the literature of this question abounds with 
such assertions. That Latin or Greek or both are necessary or 
at least very helpful to an understanding or a command of good 
English is a claim that has often been made and often denied, 
but very seldom has there been even an attempt to prove the 
proposition. Witness the following from Dean West's "The 
Value of the Classics." (p. 29) "But for the mass of English 
speaking men, rare spirits excepted, the best use of English is 
not attained without knowing the sources whence our mother 
tongue draws its life. Nearly half of it is Latin. The better we 
know Latin, then, the better our use of English." No proof is 
given or even attempted. Again, an editorial in the Cleveland 
Plain Dealer for June 6, 191 7 says, "It is as clear as day that 
the most exhaustive study of English must be deficient if it is 
not based on some knowledge of Latin and Greek." So clear 
that it is unnecessary to give even a suggestion of proof ! 
However, a conscientious judge in a debate will give little credit 
to a debater who does not prove such an assertion. 

Another precaution for the debater is in regard to the use of 
opinion evidence. The opinion of even an eminent man cannot be 
considered - ^ making the basis of a valid argument unless it can 
be shown that he is an expert in the subject under discussion, and 
even then opinion evidence must be considered as one of the 
weakest forms of argument. Opinions for or against any propo- 
sition are always easy to obtain, the same as letters of recom- 
mendation or signatures to a referendum petition. Opinions 



LATIN AND GREEK 7 

when used in a debate certainly cannot be considered as having 
the same weight as conclusions reasoned out and proved. 

The whole controversy over the value of the study of the 
dead languages will in actual debate often turn on the question of 
the purpose of education. Does higher education exist for the pur- 
pose of creating a well developed personality, one capable of en- 
joying the beautiful in art, architecture, and literature, or is its 
purpose rather to prepare each individual to fill a useful place 
in his community and enable him to render the greatest service 
to society? In any debate on this question there might well be an 
interpretation, acceptable to both sides, which would define edu- 
cation and the purpose of education. 

Lamar T. Beman. 



GENERAL DISCUSSION 

CLASSICAL STUDIES 1 

Since the revival of learning the place of honor in the edu- 
cational systems of Europe has been occupied by the study of 
the classics. During the period of scholasticism (until the end 
of the fifteenth century) interest in Greek and Latin literature 
had been decaying; the impulse given by Charlemagne in found- 
ing schools for the study of Latin and also of Greek died out, 
and Latin was cultivated for practical purposes only, and as a 
matter of necessity; for Latin was the only universal medium of 
communication, and was the language of the church and the 
law. The Renaissance — that great reaction against medisevalism 
- — resulted in the first place in a revived study of Greek and 
Latin; the Classics were studied in the spirit of Schiller's poem 
Die Cotter Griechenlands, as embodying the wisdom and beauty 
of a lost order of things, as a voice from a higher world. For 
the practical study of Latin was substituted the study of Greek 
and Latin literature. At the present day (1906) the classics may 
be said to be engaged in the struggle for existence. Both in 
England and abroad there is a strong party claiming as a right 
the abolition of the classics, or at any rate their relegation to a 
subordinate position.. 

The main contention of the supporters of a modern educa- 
tion is that so many other subjects of modern growth demand 
recognition in a scheme of education, that time cannot be spared 
for the long discipline of Greek and Latin, that time devoted to 
the classics would be sufficient to embrace a complete cycle of the 
physical sciences. Modern languages are a discipline in lan- 
guage, and might, from that point of view, make good in part, 
if not entirely, the loss of the classics, while their practical utility 
cannot be left out of sight by a commercial nation like ourselves. 
The study of English literature would, it is maintained by Prof. 
Huxley, be a far better school of literary taste and culture than 
that of the writers of Greece and Rome; "The ascent of Par- 

1 Sonnenschein's Cyclopedia of Education, p. 59-61. 



io SELECTED ARTICLES 

nassus is too steep to permit of our enjoying the view", and few 
reach the top. What there is of good in the classics could be 
better studied, from the aesthetic point of view, in translations. 
"I should just as soon think of swimming across the Hudson in 
a coat of mail when I can take a penny steamer," cries Emerson, 
"as of studying the classics in the original when I can read them 
in the admirable translations of Mr. Bohn." "The classics," says 
Prof. Huxley, "are as little suited to be the staple of a liberal 
education as palaeontology." The great aim of education, he 
holds, is to impart a knowledge of the universe as governed by 
law. Nature he compares to a beneficient angel playing a game 
of chess with man, in which defeat means death. Science is a 
knowledge of the laws of the game. Thus the demand is for 
what has been called an "Autochthonous" education — an educa- 
tion rooted in modern life and modern needs. That such an 
education is a possibility is proved by the example of Greece, 
herself. From the point of view of training, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer and Mr. Ruskin maintain that "The science which it is 
the highest power to possess, it is also the best exercise to ac- 
quire ;" in fact, that there is a sort of pre-established harmony 
between utility and educative value. 

On the other hand, the classics are not without powerful 
champions. John Stuart Mill, not himself a blind worshiper of 
"authority," held most strongly that nothing could replace Latin 
and Greek as educational instruments. He defended them 
mainly on the score of formal training. "The distinctions be- 
tween the various parts of speech are distinctions in thought, 
not merely in words. The structure of every sentence is a lesson 
in logic. The languages which teach the laws of universal gram- 
mar best are those which have the most definite rules, and which 
provide distinct forms for the greatest number of distinctions in 
thought. In these qualities the classical languages have an in- 
comparable superiority over every modern language"; it might 
be added over Hebrew and Sanskrit. Again, in perfection of 
literary form the ancients are pre-eminent; the "idea" has 
thoroughly penetrated the form and created it. Every word is 
in its right place — every sentence a work of art. Modern liter- 
ature lacks the simplicity and directness of the ancient classics. 
What they would have expressed in a single sentence, a modern 
writer will throw into three or four different forms, presenting 
it under different lights. In fact, Mill claims for classical liter- 



LATIN AND GREEK n 

ature what Hegel claimed for classical art, that the form and 
the matter are adequate one to the other. But even though the 
stage of literary enjoyment be not reached, there are many who 
hold that the training involved in a mastery of the elements of 
Latin is invaluable. Modern languages are too like our own to 
give the degree of emancipation from the thraldom of words 
which comes from comparing classic with English modes of ex- 
pression. To translate "I should have spoken" into dixissem is 
more of a lesson in thought than to translate it into Ich wiirde 
gesprochen haben, or J'aurais dit because the form is more dif- 
ferent. Still greater stress is laid upon the educational value of 
the higher kinds of composition. The recasting of the thought, 
the exercise of the vis divinor involved in clothing an idea in 
Greek or Latin, has been called the microcosm of a liberal edu- 
cation. (A. Sidgwick) Perhaps the strongest testimony of mod- 
ern times to the value of a classical education is the Berlin 
memorial of 1880, addressed to the Prussian Minister of Educa- 
tion, on the question of admission of Realschuler to the univer- 
sities. This memorial represents the unanimous views of the 
members of the faculty of philosophy (i.e. arts and sciences) and 
was signed by Hoffman, Helmholtz, Peters, Zupitza, etc. as well 
as by the classical professors. The memorial insists upon the 
value of classical philology in cultivating the ideality of the sci- 
entific sense, the interest in science not dependent on nor limited 
by practical aims, but as ministering to the liberal education of 
the mind and the many sided exercise of the thinking faculty. 
To hold the scales between views so strongly held and so 
ably maintained is a difficult task, but must be attempted here. 
In the first place, it may be well to dispose of certain fallacies 
which rest upon popular prejudice rather than upon any basis of 
reason or experience. I. That the classics train only the mem- 
ory, not thought or observation. It may fairly be replied that 
though memory is involved, it is not necessarily involved more 
than in any other discipline. The learning of grammar by rote 
is falling out of favor; the dictionary meanings of words are 
learned not by a conscious exercise of the portative memory, 
but in the same way as the names of flowers or animals in study- 
ing natural history. The syntactical structure of Latin and 
Greek is more logical in its character than anything in the disci- 
pline of physical sciences. Observation — not, of course, sense- 
observation — is constantly exercised in translation and' composi- 



12 SELECTED ARTICLES 

tion. Nor is it practically found that classical scholars are less 
capable, as thinkers, than physicists. 2. That classics foster a 
blind adherence to authority. But no one nowadays holds that 
the classic writers are all equally worthy of admiration, or claims 
any special consideration for the opinions which they express. 
Grammar is not the arbitrary creation of schoolmasters, but the 
record of law discovered by patient observation, and liable to re- 
vision by any competent inquirer. Mill held precisely the op- 
posite opinion as to the effects of classical study. 3. That there 
is something grotesque and mediaeval in classical studies. It 
has been shown above that so far from being mediaeval, the 
classics have established their position in our schools and uni- 
versities by a revolt against medievalism. 4. That the methods 
of teaching the classics cannot be further improved. So far is 
this from being true, that the scientific problem of constituting 
the rules of grammar is still only in the process of solution, and 
the existence of the didactic problem of determining what and 
how much should be taught at each stage has only begun to be 
realized in its full import. 

On the other hand, the champions of physical science do not 
always have fair play. It is popularly supposed that "science" 
consists in accumulation of information such as that when a 
candle burns water and carbonic acid are produced, and that the 
good of physical science may be got by studying its results in 
books. This is to misunderstand and underrate the discipline of 
the laboratory. The value of training in the physical sciences is 
not to be measured by the possession of so many useful facts 
about gases, plants, and animals. If richly pursued, it involves 
not only a power of sense-obsexvation, without which a man must 
be considered as so far maimed and defective, but also a habit 
of mind and attitude towards the universe, which have a very 
direct bearing upon both the criticism and the conduct of life. 
The man or woman who has physiological knowledge will be so 
far in a better position to make a study of health, and to bring 
up children wisely; will be less likely to ignore "the laws of the 
game," to believe in the domination of chance, and to make rash 
experiments in amateur medicine. For to be scientific is to know 
one's limitations, and this is a power. 

The practical question is, to what extent can we afford to 
make education as complete as possible, and, supposing that 
something has to be sacrificed, what is it best to sacrifice? That 



LATIN AND GREEK 13 

the literary side of education cannot be even relatively complete 
without classics may be taken as demonstrated. Our study of 
Greek and Latin is not so much the study of a foreign culture 
as the study of our own past ; so intimately is modern culture 
connected, through the Renaissance, with Greece and Rome. 
We stand to the classics in a different relation from that in which 
they stood to anterior civilizations. Greek culture was, generally 
speaking, autochthonous ; modern culture is not. And the man 
who has no Latin or Greek finds himself unable to prosecute his 
literary studies far, or to be a master even in the literature of his 
own country. Still the question remains, can we afford to pur- 
chase this completeness at the price which it costs — a less com- 
plete developement in the direction of modern studies? The 
answer to it must depend upon the aim which people set before 
themselves in life — upon utility in its broad sense — and upon the 
length of the school course. For those whose tastes are literary 
or artistic, classics may be the most useful of studies ; for those 
who have to contemplate an early entrance into practical pursuits, 
they may well be a luxury of too high a cost. At the present day 
the classics retain a firm hold of our higher English schools, and 
Latin, at any rate, is becoming recognized as an important item 
in the education of girls. 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES x 

We are prone to think of the old-time universities as classical 
or literary schools with certain limited post-graduate features, 
more or less distantly smacking of science. The reason for this 
is easy to understand. It is because out of such classical and 
literary colleges our present universities, with their devotion to 
science, were developed or transformed during the last generation 
or two. It is to be utterly ignorant of mediaeval education, how 
ever, to think that the classical and literary schools are types of 
university work in the Middle Ages. The original universities 
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries paid no attention to 
language at all except inasmuch as Latin, the universal language, 
was studied in order that there might be a common ground of 
understanding. Latin was not studied at all, however, from its 
literary side; to style as such the professors in the old mediaeval 

1 Walsh, James J. Education, How Old the New. p. 103-8. 



14 SELECTED ARTICLES 

universities and the writers of the books of the time paid no at- 
tention. Indeed it was because of this neglect of style in litera- 
ture and of the niceties of classical Latin that the university men 
of recent centuries before our own, so bitterly condemned the 
old, mediaeval teachers and were so utterly unsympathetic with 
their teaching and methods. We, however, have come once more 
into a time when style means little, indeed, entirely too little, and 
when the matter is supposed to be everything, and we should 
have more sympathy with our older forefathers in education who 
were in the same boat. We have inherited traditions of mis- 
understanding in this matter, but we should know the reasons 
for them and then they will disappear. 

As a matter of fact, exactly the same thing happened in our 
modern change of university interests during the latter half of 
the nineteenth century as happened in the latter half of the 
fifteenth century in Italy, and in the next century throughout 
Europe. With the fall of Constantinople the Greeks were sent 
packing by the Turks and they carried with them into Italy man- 
uscripts of the old Greek authors, examples of old Greek art and 
the classic spirit of devotion to literature as such. A new educa- 
tional movement termed the study of the humanities had been 
making some way in Italy during the preceding half-century be- 
fore the fall of Constantinople, but now interest in it came with 
a rush. The clergymen, the nobility, even the women of the 
time became interested in the New Learning, as it was called. 
Private schools of various kinds were opened for the study of 
it, and everybody considered that it was the one thing that people 
who wanted to keep up to date, smart people, for they have 
always been with us, should not fail to be familiar with. The 
humanities became the fashion, just as science became the 
fashion in the nineteenth century. Fashion has a wonderfully 
pervasive power and it runs in cycles in intellectual matters as 
well as in clothes. 

The devotees of the New Learning demanded a place for it in 
the universities. University faculties perfectly confident, as uni- 
versity faculties always are, that what they had in the curriculum 
was quite good enough, and conservative enough to think that 
what had been good enough for their forefathers was surely 
good enough also for this generation, refused to admit the new 
studies. For a considerable period, therefore, the humanities had 



LATIN AND GREEK 15 

to be pursued in institutions apart from the universities. Indeed 
it was not until the Jesuits showed how valuable classical studies 
might be made for developmental purposes and true education 
that they were admitted into the universities. 

Note the similarity with certain events in our own time in 
all this.- Two generations ago the universities refused to admit 
science. They were training men in their undergraduate depart- 
ments by means of classical literature. They argued exactly as 
did the old mediaeval universities with regard to the new learn- 
ing, that they had no place for science. Science had to be 
learned, then, in separate institutions for a time. The scientific 
educational movement made its way, however, until finally it was 
admitted into the university curricula. Now we are in the midst 
of an educational period when the classics are losing in favor so 
rapidly that it seems as though it would not be long before they 
would be entirely replaced by the sciences, except, in so far as 
those are concerned who are looking for education in literature 
and the classic languages for special purposes. 

It will be interesting, then, to trace the story of the old 
mediaeval universities as far as the science in their curriculum 
was concerned, because it represents much more closely than we 
might have imagined, or than is ordinarily thought, the preced- 
ing phase of education to the classical period which we have seen 
go out of fashion to so great an extent in the last two genera- 
tions. We shall readily find that at least as much time was de- 
voted in the mediaeval universities to the physical sciences as in 
our own, and that the culture sciences filled up the rest of the 
curriculum. Philosophy, which occupied so prominent a place 
in older university life, was not only a culture science, but phys- 
ical science as well, as indeed the name natural philosophy, which 
remained almost down to our day, attests. 

Physical science was not the sole object of these mediaeval 
institutions of learning, but they were thoroughly scientific. The 
main object of the universities in the olden time was to secure 
such discussion of the problems of man's relation to the universe, 
to his Creator, to his fellow-creatures and to the material world 
as would enable him to appreciate his rights and 'duties and to 
use his powers. Huxley declared that the trivium and quad- 
rivium, the seven liberal arts studied in the mediaeval universities, 
probably demonstrate a clearer and more generous comprehen- 



i6 SELECTED ARTICLES 

sion of what is meant by culture than the curriculum of any 
modern university. Language was learned through grammar, 
the science of language. Reasoning was learned through logic, 
the science of reasoning; the art of expression through rheto- 
ric, a combination of art and science with applications to prac- 
tical life. Mathematics was studied with a zeal and a success 
that only those who know the history of mediaeval mathematics 
can at all appreciate. Cantor, the German historian of mathe- 
matics, in hundreds of pages of a large volume, has told the 
story of the development of mathematics during the centuries be- 
fore the Renaissance, that is from the thirteenth to the fifteenth, 
in a way that makes it very clear that the teaching at the uni- 
versities in this subject was not dry and sterile, but eminently 
productive, successful in research, and with constant additions to 
knowledge such as live universities ought to make. 

Then there was astronomy, metaphysics, theology, music, 
law and medicine. The science of law was developed and, above 
all, great collections of laws made for purposes of scientific 
study. Of astronomy every one was expected to know much, 
of medicine we shall have considerable to say hereafter, but in 
the meantime it is well to recall that these mediaeval centuries 
maintained a high standard of medical education and brought 
some wonderful developments in the sciences allied to medicine 
and above all in their applications to therapeutics. Surgery 
never reached so high a plane of achievement down to our own 
time, as during the period when it was studied so faithfully and 
developed so marvellously at the mediaeval universities. It was 
inasmuch as a knowledge of physics was needed for the develop- 
ment of metaphysics that the mediaeval schoolmen devoted them- 
selves to the study of nature. They turned with as much ardor 
and devotion as did Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century, 
to the accumulation of such information with regard to nature 
as would enable them to draw conclusions, establish general prin- 
ciples and lay firm foundations for reasonings with regard to 
the creature and the Creator. It is, above all, this phase of 
mediaeval teaching work, of the schoolmen's ardent interest that 
is misunderstood, often ignored and only too frequently mis- 
represented in the modern time. 



LATIN AND GREEK 17 



REQUIREMENTS FOR THE BACHELOR'S 
DEGREE x 

(a) College Entrance Requirements 
Colonial Period 

Latin and Greek. — The history of college entrance require- 
ments in the United States begins in 1642, when Harvard Col- 
lege published the following announcement: 

When any scholar is able to read Tully or such like classical Latin 
Author extempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose 
(suo (ut aiunt Marte), without any assistance whatever and decline per- 
fectly the paridigms of nouns and verbs in ye Greek tongue, then may 
hee bee admitted into ye College, nor shall any claim admission before 
such qualifications. 

The foregoing is a translation from the Latin of a part of the 
college statutes. 

In the College of William and Mary, Latin and Greek were 
the only subjects required for entrance at the beginning of its 
career in 1693, although no definite statement of the requirements 
is given. 

As early as 1720, Yale College made the following announce- 
ment : 

Such as are admitted Students into ye Collegiate School shall in their 
examination in order thereunto be found expert in both ye Latine and 
Greek grammars, as also skilful in construing and grammatically resolving 
both Latine and Greek authors and in making good and true latin. 

As time progressed some difficulty was found at Harvard in 
keeping up that part of the requirement which obliged the candi- 
dates to speak Latin. In 1734 this obstacle was removed, and in 
1790 the word "translate" was substituted for the word "construe." 
Yale followed suit in 1795. 

Arithmetic. — In 1745, Yale College added common arithmetic 
to the entrance requirements. At the same time the moral char- 
acter of the candidates was not overlooked, as is shown by the 
following: "And shall bring sufficient testimony of his blameless 
and inoffensive life." 

Princeton, in 1746, based the entrance standards on the same 
grounds as those of Harvard and Yale, but did not include arith- 
metic until 1760. This subject, however, seems to have dropped 

1 Walton C. John. Requirements for the Bachelor's Degree. (Chap, i.) 



18 SELECTED ARTICLES 

out until 1813 when the student was supposed to know the subject 
as far as the rule of three. 

Columbia College, which began as King's College in 1754, pre- 
scribed Latin, Greek, and arithmetic for entrance. Both Brown 
and Williams had essentially the same requirements. 

Entrance examinations (oral). — During the colonial period 
most students prepared for college at the Latin-grammar schools 
which were closely related to the colleges. The examinations 
were oral and not so strict as might have been expected. 

The Nineteenth Century 

Geography. — In 1807, geography and arithmetic were added 
to the usual requirements at Harvard College, and there is evi- 
dence of greater care in stating the terms of admission. The 
amount of work in each subject was more clearly indicated. 
Neither was quality overlooked when we find within small com- 
pass such expressions as these : "Thoroughly acquainted with the 
grammar of the Greek;" "properly construe and parse," etc.; "be 
well instructed in the following rules of arithmetic;" "have well 
studied a compendium of geography." Geography found a place 
as an entrance requirement before 1830 in Princeton, Columbia, 
Yale, and other colleges. 

English grammar. — The next preparatory subject introduced 
was English grammar. Princeton led out with this subject in 
1819, being followed by Yale in 1822, Columbia in i860, and by 
Harvard in 1866. 

Algebra and geometry. — Harvard was the first college to ex- 
tend the entrance requirement in mathematics beyond arithmetic. 
In 1820 elementary algebra was added as far as geometrical pro- 
gressions. Algebra was prescribed for entrance by Columbia in 
1821, by Yale in 1847, and by Princeton in 1848. In 1844 Harvard 
added geometry and additional topics in algebra. Between 1856 
and 1870 geometry was added to the entrance requirements by 
Yale, Princeton, Michigan, and Columbia. 

History; physical geography. — History was required for en- 
trance by Harvard and Michigan in 1847; by Cornell in 1868. 
Physical geography was found in the requirements for Harvard 
and Michigan in 1870. 



LATIN AND GREEK 19 



The Modern Period 



Modern languages. — Harvard College was the first to make 
French an entrance requirement for the regular college course, 
although in the early part of the nineteenth century Columbia 
College had recognized this language as a prerequisite to its 
courses, in science. By 1875, both French and German had equal 
recognition as entrance subjects at Harvard. Yale added French 
in 1885, Columbia in 1891, Princeton in 1893, and Cornell in 1897. 

English composition and rhetoric. — English composition was 
included in the entrance requirements of Princeton in 1870. The 
colleges next to add this subject were Harvard in 1874 Michigan 
in 1878, Columbia and Cornell in 1882, and Yale in 1894. Rhe- 
toric had been required by the University of Michigan from 1874 
to 1878, while Princeton added the latter subject in 1884. 

Sciences. — Although Harvard and Michigan had already in- 
troduced physical geography in 1870, Syracuse University was 
the first to prescribe natural philosophy. Natural science was 
added to the requirements by Harvard in 1876, Cornell followed 
with physiology in 1877, and Michigan included natural science 
and botany in 1890. 

It is apparent that the order of importance of prescribed en- 
trance subjects has been completely reversed in recent years. 
Until a few years ago Latin and Greek had always occupied first 
place, but since 1885 English has gained the ascendancy. Start- 
ing out with simple grammar the subject has been developed so 
as to include composition, rhetoric, and a broad range of study 
in the best of both English and American literatures. Latin and 
Greek still have a place in college entrance requirements, but 
they are seldom required unless it be in combination with modern 
languages. The present tendency is to consider all languages 
under one general group; the privilege is then given to the stu- 
dent to make suitable electives in harmony with the specific pur- 
pose of the college course. 

Mathematics is the only entrance subject that in the long run 
of years has maintained its place. Next to English it appears 
most frequently on the list of prescribed subjects. 

Science and history are well established, although they are 
considered as electives by nearly one-half of the institutions of 
our list. 



20 .SELECTED ARTICLES 

The most recent development is the growing recognition of 
a large group of vocational subjects which command within cer- 
tain limits equal credit with the literary subjects. 

(b) College Graduation Requirements 

Colonial Period 

The establishment of Harvard College on the banks of the 
Charles in 1636 is the outstanding event in the history of higher 
education in the United States. As the mother of American col- 
leges and universities, Harvard College has been inseparably 
connected with the developments of collegiate education that 
have taken place during the past three centuries. Compared with 
the present standards of graduation the following requirements, 
taken from the laws of Dunster (1642), seem very simple indeed: 

Every scholar that on proof is found able to translate the original of 
the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and to resolve them 
logically, and shall be imbued with the beginnings of natural and moral 
philosophy, withal being of honest life and conversation, and at any 
public act hath the approbation of the overseers and master of the college, 
may be invested with his first degree; but no one will expect this degree 
unless he shall have passed four years in college and has maintained therein 
a blameless life and has sedulously observed all public exercises. 

The first year shall teach rhetoric, second and third year dialectics, and 
the fourth year shall add philosophy * * * In this course of four 
years each one shall dispute twice in his public schools and shall respond 
twice in his own class; which if he performs, and is found worthy after 
the regular examination, he shall become an A.B. 

William and Mary College was founded in 1693, at Williams- 
burg, Va., by James Blair, who modeled the curriculum some- 
what on the plan of the University of Edinburgh. The principal 
subjects of study were the classics, Hebrew, philosophy, arith- 
metic, geography, and anatomy. Yale was established at New 
Haven, Conn., in 1701. The subjects prescribed for the A. B. 
degree at that institution were the classics including Tully and 
Vergil, also logic, physics, Greek, New Testament, and Hebrew. 
Disputations were held two or three times a week. 

Princeton College received its charter in 1745 and closely fol- 
lowed the programs of Harvard and Yale. The University of 
Pennsylvania was a direct offshoot from the College, Academy, 
and Charitable School of Philadelphia. Franklin was the father 
of this school and he bore testimony in his early day to the use- 
lessness of Latin and Greek in the educational requirements of 
the schools. To him foreign languages were but the tools of 
knowledge, and if the vernacular gave all necessary information, 
other tools were needless. The course of study at the Phila- 



LATIN AND GREEK 21 

delphia school was unusually strong in science, and contrary to 
the desires of the founder, it was equally strong in the classics. 

Columbia University, founded as King's College in 1754, en- 
larged the college curriculum and laid the foundation for a very 
broad course of study. The following summary of college re- 
quirements announced by the president in the year 1754 is of .spe- 
cial interest: 

The college aims to instruct and perfect — 

In the learned languages; 

In the art of reasoning correctly; 

In writing correctly and speaking eloquently; 

In the arts of numbering and measuring; 

In surveying and navigation; 

In geography and history; 

In husbandry, commerce, and government; 

In knowledge of all nature in the heavens above us and in the air, 
water, and earth around us and the various kinds of meteors, stones, 
mines, and minerals, plants, and animals; 

In everything useful for the comfort, the convenience, and elegance 
of life in the chief manufactures. 

To lead them [pupils] from the study of nature to the knowledge of 
themselves and of the God of nature, and their duty to Him, themselves, 
and one another; 

And everything that can contribute to their true happiness, both here 
and hereafter. 

The Revolutionary Period, and French Influences 
(1780 to 1840) 

About the time of the Revolutionary War when the influences 
which gave birth to the Nation were at their height in this coun- 
try, several important State-supported colleges were founded. 
These reflected to a considerable extent the French practices of 
organization, especially in the States of New York, Georgia, 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Louisiana, California, and Maryland. 

The colleges were, in most instances, the centers of the several 
State systems of education. To a certain extent the elective sys- 
tem, as we now understand it, was attributed to French in- 
fluences. Jefferson in reorganizing education in Virginia showed 
the result of his contact with the newer ideas which have made 
a lasting impression on higher education in this country. The 
curriculum of the University of Virginia, as adopted in 1824, is, 
doubtless, next to the founding of Harvard College, the most 
significant event in the history of American college education. 

George Ticknor, who was called to the chair of languages at 
Harvard College in 1817, urged radical changes in the administra- 
tion of the curriculum on accepting his post, and he sponsored 
not only the elective system but urged the organization of de- 
partments with separate heads. 

About the middle of the nineteenth century President Way- 



22 SELECTED ARTICLES 

land, of Brown University, was successful in broadening the 
scope of the college curriculum. He stood also for a better 
quality of instruction. Meanwhile the sciences, chemistry in 
particular, were finding a permanent place in college require- 
ments, having appeared first at Yale and Harvard shortly after 
the year 1800. Mathematics was being developed under the in- 
fluence of the great French mathematicians. Political economy 
was first taught at Harvard in 1820, and Yale, Columbia, Dart- 
mouth, Princeton, and Williams all added this subject within 15 
years. The first chair of history was founded by William and 
Mary in 1822 and Harvard followed suit in 1839. 

While French had been a side issue in some of the colleges, 
Bowdoin established a chair of modern languages, under H. W. 
Longfellow, in 1825. In the same year German was added to 
the course at Harvard. It was also taught at the University of 
Virginia. 

The Civil War 

The Civil War gave a setback to several of the old State in- 
stitutions which had' arisen under the national movement. But 
at the same time a very important movement in higher education 
was launched by Senator Morrill, of Vermont, who was father 
of the principal enabling acts of the land-grant colleges. These 
colleges were not only to give a liberal education in the arts and 
sciences, but were especially devoted to developing agricultural 
and engineering education of a high order. The States were not 
slow in complying with the conditions of the Morrill and subse- 
quent acts, so to-day we find 68 land-grant colleges in successful 
operation all over the United States. 

German Influence 

The influence of the German universities on a small group of 
prominent American thinkers and educators before the outbreak 
of the Civil War led to the further development of the principle 
of freedom of election of college studies. President Eliot, of 
Harvard, in the year 1869, led out in this movement which has 
with little resistance spread over the United States. Some reac- 
tion to extreme views on this question has been manifest, the 
present tendency being to safeguard the student's work by a more 
restricted plan of election which will insure the most profitable 
combination of studies. 



LATIN AND GREEK 23 



BRIEF EXCERPTS 

The conflict of science and Classics is a dead issue. Science 
has won an overwhelming victory, Paul Shorey, Atlantic 
Monthly 120:97 July 1017. 

If there be one thing more certain than another, it is that 
Latin and Greek -no longer hold the place as educational agen- 
cies which they occupied one hundred or, indeed, even fifty years 
ago. Sidney G. Ashmore, Professor of Latin, Union College, 
The Classics and Modern Training, p. 1. 

Fifty per cent of the crime today can be traced to the public 
school system and the manner in which it turns the children out 
into the world, without a vocation and without the necessary 
training to fit them for the work that they are to do. Mayor 
Darius A. Brown, of Kansas City, Buffalo Courier Sept. 11, 1920. 

The classics a few generations ago, held indisputably the 
commanding position among all other subjects of the school and 
college curriculum. Mathematics and philosophy shared with 
the ancient tongues almost the entire time of the student. The 
recent development, however, of the natural and physical sci- 
ences, the rise of good modern literature and the commercial 
spirit of the age have retired Greek and Latin to a place co- 
ordinate with or subordinate to the modern subjects, and have 
even forced, them to defend their right to remain. No longer is 
there any necessity for one or two studies to sway the curricu- 
lum, and even the friends of the ancient languages do not desire 
to have them restored to their former dominion. Edward P. 
Dams, Education 32:52 Sept. ion. 

By the head of the Department of Latin in Adelbert College 
is given this statement, "All interest in matters classical and all 
belief in their value have ceased to exist in the community and 
the same condition obtains in college. About twenty per cent 
of the freshmen take Latin during their first year, not because 
they wish to do so, but because it seems easier than anything else 
under the present arrangements. Two or three or four students 
continue a year longer, — practically nobody after sophomore 



24 SELECTED ARTICLES 

year. There is therefore no incentive for advanced work in this 
institution in classics, for Greek is worse off than Latin, and it is 
of course foolish for anyone to study Latin without Greek and 
quite impossible to carry on the work in the former without the 
latter." Annual Report of the President of Adelbert College and 
Western Reserve University, Western Reserve Bulletin 18:48, 
Sept. 1915. 



AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION 

THE CASE FOR THE CLASSICS x 

No subject is too stale for a "rattling speech," and the mere 
praise of the classics and the exposure of the adversary still sup- 
ply good matter of rhetoric. 2 But this paper is to be printed, 
and I hope with the aid of footnotes to make it a sufficient, 
though of course not exhaustive, historical resume and a reper- 
tory of temperate arguments adapted to present conditions. 3 To 
this end I am prepared to sacrifice not only its temporary effect 
on an audience but any ambition I might feel to attain the sym- 
metry and classicism of form which befit a classicist speaking in 
his own cause and which are so admirably illustrated in the apol- 
ogies for classical studies of Mill and Jebb and Arnold. 4 

The situation has improved since I had the honor of speak- 
ing here fifteen or sixteen years ago, and many topics which I 
dwelt on then may be lightly enumerated today. The wearisome 
controversy has educated the participants on both sides. 5 Both 
are more careful in their dialectic and more cautious in the 

1 Professor Paul Shorey. School Review. 18:585-617. Nov. 1910. 

2 Cf. Professor Forman's Humble Apology for Greek, Cornell Univer- 
sity, ici04, printed privately. 

8 Cf. infra, p. 600-1. Even in 1868 Professor Gildersleeve had to make 
the same point (Essays and Studies, 5: "Dr. Bigelow is fighting the 
shadows of the past," etc. — Ibid., 10). 

4 Mill, "Inaugural Address," Dissertations and Discussions, IV, 332 ff. ; 
Jebb, Essays and Addresses, 506 ff. ; Humanism in Education, 545 ff. ; 
Present Tendencies in Classical Studies, 560 ff., 609 ff., 636 ff; Arnold, 
"Literature and Science," Discourses in America, 172 ff. To these might 
be added Lowell's. "Harvard Anniversary Address," Prose Works, VI, 139, 
160, 165: "Oblivion looks in the face of the Grecian Muse only to for- 
get her errand," 166, 174; and Latest Lit. Essays, 139, the speech in which 
the greatest professor of modern languages told the Modern Language 
Association: "I hold this evening a brief for the modern languages and 
am bound to put the case in as fair a light as I conscientiously can." See 
the fine chapter on "Reading" in Thoreau's Walden. And for further 
bibliography of books and papers referred to in this address cf. infra, 
P- 59i. S87, 599- 

5 Huxley (Science and Education, 83) stretched "nature" to include 
"men and their ways," and Arnold with more justice made "letters" in- 
clude Copernicus and Darwin (their results, not their processes). 



26 SELECTED ARTICLES 

abuse of exaggeration and irrelevancy. 1 Our opponents have 
grown very shy of the kind of logic which delivered them into 
our hands, though they still grotesquely misconceive the nature 
and aims of our teaching. 2 But only a few incorrigibles still 
harp on the false antithesis of words and things. 3 The recollec- 
tion of Lowell's eloquent protest (VI, 174) if nothing else would 
make them eschew the precious argument of Herbert Spencer 
and Lowe that Greece was such a little country, "no bigger than 
an English county." Some of them are beginning to apprehend 
the distinction between education and instruction, formation and 
information. 4 And if any of them still believe that the intrinsic 
excellence of classical literautre is a superstition of pedants they 
rarely venture to say so in public in the fearless old fashion of 
the Popular Science Monthly. 5 We have won a victory at the 
bar of educated opinion in which we may feel some complacency, 
though we must beware of overestimating its practical signifi- 
cance. The man in the street has not changed his opinion of 
dead languages, and the great drift of American education and 
life toward absorption in the fascinating spectacle of the present 
has not been, perhaps cannot be, checked. A stream of tendency 
cannot be dammed by argument. As Professor James says: 

1 Huxley, op. cit., 163; Jebb, op. cit., 537. No rational advocate would 
now recommend either Latin or botany on the ground that it exercises 
the memory. See Gildersleeve, op. cit., 28. 

1 Cf. President David Starr Jordan, Pop. Sci. Mo., 73 (1908), p. 28: 
"Once the student cuts entirely loose from real objects and spends his 
days among diacritical marks, irregular conjugations, and distinctions 
without difference his orientation is lost." So Tyndall once demanded 
"a culture which shall embrace something more than declensions and con- 
jugations." What would President Jordan think of a classicist who char- 
acterized the study of science as cutting loose from human interests and 
counting fish-scales? See Zielinski's rebuke of Father Petroff, p. 200-1; 
Lowe, "Speech at Edinburgh," November 1, 1867: "We find a statement 
in Thucydides or Cornelius Nepos who wrote 500 years after and we 
never are instructed that the statement of the latter is not quite as good 
as the former. . . . The study of the dead languages precludes the 
inquiring habit of mind which measures probabilities" [sic~\. Cf. infra, p. 
594-97- 

* Lowe at Edinburgh, November, 1867; Spencer, passim; Jordan, Pop. 
Sci. Mo., 73 (1908), p. 29; cf. Youmans, 5, "The relation between words, 
and ideas ... is accidental and arbitrary." Cf. contra 
Masson apud Taylor, p 306; Mill, 347-8. 

'Gildersleeve, Essays and Studies, 13: Zielinski, 28; Brunetiere, Ques- 
tions Actuelles, 51 ff., 62, 74-75, 404-5. 

8 23, 701: "The Dead Language Superstition," a diatribe called forth 
by Mill's "Inaugural." See in like strain Mach, Open Court, November 
22, 1894; Bierbower, "Passing of the Linguist," N. E. Magazine, n.s. 36, 
246 ff. 



LATIN AND GREEK 27 

"Round your obstacle flows the water and gets there all the 
same." 1 The majority still believe that modern civilization can 
find not only entertainment but also all the instruction and all 
the culture which it requires in the contemplation of moving 
pictures of itself whether in the five-cent theater or the ten-cent 
magazine or the one-cent newspaper. But among the thoughtful 
there is a reaction in our favor. They may not accept our esti- 
mates of the transcendental worth of the classic literatures or 
the unique discipline of classical studies. But they have lost 
forever the illusion that the mere suppression of Greek and 
Latin will bring in the educational millennium. 2 They are ob 
serving with mixed feelings a Greekless generation of gradu- 
ates and wondering what a Latinless generation will be like. They 
admit with some natural reserves the breakdown of the elective 
system. 3 They recognize that a real education must be based on 
a serious, consecutive, progressive study of something definite, 
teachable, and hard. 4 And while they may not agree with us 
that no good substitutes for Greek and Latin and the exact sci- 
ences can be found, they are not quite so certain as they were 
that sociology, household administration, modern English fiction, 
short stories as a mode of thinking, and modern French and 
German comedies are "equally as good." Thirty or fifty years 
ago they could contrast with our ideal the actual results of that 
classical training for which we claimed so much. 5 It is now our 
turn to challenge the results of the new system. 6 

Addressing myself to a generation thus chastened in spirit 

1 For an effective answer to this fatalistic vox populi vox Dei argu- 
ment, see Zielinski, Our Debt to Antiquity (Eng. trans., E. P. Dutton), 
3-8; cf. Lowell, "Harvard Anniversary Address," Works, VI, 162: "I 
have seen several spirits of the age in my time," etc. Paulsen (II, 370) 
says that in 1770 Kant would never have foreseen that in 1820 Greek 
would lead science in the schools. Yet he himself ventures the pre- 
diction that a third renaissance of classics will never come (p. 634-35). 

'"Harking Back to the Classics," Atlantic Mo., 101 (1908), 482; L. R. 
Briggs, "Some Old-Fashioned Doubts about New-fashioned Education," 
Atlantic Mo., 86, 463; Williams, School Review (1909), 383-84. Gayley, 
Idols of Education; Barrett Wendell, The Mystery of Education; see 
Brunett&re, op. cit., 399-400. 

8 Already Lowell, op. cit., VI. 161: cf. Shorey, "Discipline in Edu- 
cation. "_ Bookman, March, 1906, See the entire recent literature of des- 
satisfaction with the colleges. 

4 Huxley, op. cit., 414; cf already the admirable words of De Mor- 
gan in Youmans, The Culture Demanded by Modern Life, 442. 

" See Contemp. Review xxxv, 833. 

' Paulsen in Educat. Review, xxxiii. 39, says (of classics) that we 
must consider what the average graduate gets, not ideals. Well, what 
has the average graduate been getting from the "bargain-counter, sample 
room, a la carte" system of the past two decades? 



28 SELECTED ARTICLES 

and exercised in the dialectics of educational controversy, I need 
not do more than enumerate some of the hoary fallacies and 
irrelevancies which it was once necessary to refute in detail. I 
may take it for granted that we must compare either ideals with 
ideals or actualities with actualities ; that from the standpoint of 
the ideal all subjects are badly taught, imperfectly learned, and 
quickly forgotten ; x that the classics are on the whole among the 
better-taught subjects, 2 and that middle-aged business men who 
complain that they cannot read Greek and Latin for pleasure 
would not distinguish themselves if examined on mediaeval his- 
tory, conic sections, old French, organic chemistry, or whatever 
else they happened to elect in college. As George Eliot says, "the 
depth of middle-aged gentlemen's ignorance will never be known 
for want of public examinations in this branch." It is known in 
the case of the classics only because they regret that they have 
lost them and so betray themselves. 

Similarly we may assume a general recognition of the distinc- 
tion between the higher and the lower sense of "practical," 3 
of the fact that the most practical of studies are useful only to 
those who are to use them, 4 and of the repeated testimony of 
business and technical men that the actual knowledge gained in 
preparatory college courses in their subjects is of little value. 5 

Again everybody except President Stanley Hall is now aware 

1 Cf. Barrett Wendell, The Mystery of Education, 143. On the at- 
tempt to limit education to what all "educated" men remember cf. Zie- 
linski, p. 27. 

2 Cf . Andover Review, V, No. 2 (1884), 83; Huxley, op. cit., 153; 
Professor Alexander Smith, in Science, XXX, 457-66: "Every conclusion 
is tested and every element in problem-solving by the scientific method 
is covered. . . The method is simple, yet of unquestionable efficiency 
A method so simple and certain has not yet been devised for history, 
literature, political economy, or chemistry." 

8 Cf. Cambridge Essays (1855), 291; W. F. Allen, Memorial Volume 
129, "Practical Education"; Forman, op. cit., 7-9; Clapp, Overland, 
XXVIII, 94. 

1 Huxley, Science and Ed., 316-21, rejects histology, comparative anat 
omy, and materia medica as of no practical use to the physician. Cf. 
Brunetiere, op. cit., 401; Jacob Bigelow, "Remarks on Classical and Utili- 
tarian Studies," 1867, with the answer in No. Am. Rev., CIV, 610. 

8 Loeb, School Rev. (1909), 373, "But thirteen years' experience in 
very active affairs taught me that the time spent at Harvard studying 
history of finance. . . . might as well have been devoted to the classics 
for all the practical value I got." "Ou sont aujourd'hui la physique, la 
chimie, la physiologie d'il y a trente ans seulement, et qu' en connaissons- 
nous pour les avoir 6tudiees au college, et depuis oubliees?' — Brunetiere, 
op. cit., 94. 



LATIN AND GREEK 29 

that the phrase "dead language" is not an argument but a ques- 
tion-begging epithet or a foolish, outworn, metaphor. 1 

Lastly, the right use and limits of translations are no longer 
likely to be misunderstood. Few will now be misled either by 
Labouchere's statement that Bohn's translations had shown up 
the classics, or Emerson's saying that he would as soon swim 
when there was a bridge as resort to the original in place of a 
translation; or Professor Moulton's argument that translations 
are as good as the originals for the teacher of "general" liter- 
ature. And though we sometimes meet the fallacy that posed 
Gibbon's aunt, the argument that the student's own version is 
inferior to the printed translations of great scholars which he 
might use instead, it is merely as Gibbon says "a silly sophism 
which could not easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any 
language but her own." There is no opposition between the use 
of translations and the study of the original. On the contrary 
even a little acquaintance with the original adds immensely to 
their usefulness. They are tools which are best employed by 
those who have some insight into the method of their construc- 
tion. 2 For some purposes they may be almost as good as the 
originals. But among the purposes for which they are not so 
good are classroom discipline, the development of the critical 
intelligence and the habit of exactness, and the maintenance of 
high standards of national taste and culture in the educated 
classes.? 

1 Cf. Fouillee, 125, on Raoul Frary's "Culture of Dead Wood." "A 
dead language is the dead sea of thought" — Pop Sci. Mo., xvii, 148. Cf. 
in Butler's Erewhon, the satire on "Colleges of Unreason given over to 
the study of the Hypothetical Language"; the elaboration of the same old 
jest in another form by Professor Scott, Ed., XVI, 360, and Spencer's 
constant recourse to the argument. 

For the retort crushing on the "dead languages" argument, cf. the 
eloquent words of D'Arcy W. Thompson in Day Dreams of a Schoolmas- 
ter; Lowell, op. cit., VI, 165; "If their language is dead, yet the literature 
it enshrines is rammed with life as perhaps no other .... ever was 
or will be." — Bryce, School Rev. (1909), 369; Postdate's Liverpool Inau- 
gural Lecture on "Dead Language and Dead Languages," 1-10; ibid., 12; 
85 per cent of "Ido" is intelligible to an Englishman who knows — Latin. 
For the superior educational value of a synthetic, classic, or a "dead" 
language, cf. J ebb, op. cit., 621; Gildersleeve, op. cit., 27-28; Mill, op. cit., 
352-53; Ziplinski, op. cit., 33 ff. ; Laurie, 10; infra, p. 598. 

' Cf . President Mackenzie, School Rev. (1908), 378-80; Zielinski, op. 
cit., 112. 

* Cf. Gildersleeve, op. cit., 20, A. J. P., XXX, 353; Mill, op. cit., 350; 
Clapp, op. cit., 100; Zielinski, op. cit., 85, 87; T. Herbert Warren, Essays 
on Poets and Poetry, III; Wilamowitz, Introduction to "Hippolytus" : Was 
ist TJebersetzen? ; Paul Cauer, Kunst des Uebersetzens, 4th ed., 1909; Diels, 
Herakleitos: "TJebersetzen ist Spiel oder, wenn man will, Spielerei." 



3 o SELECTED ARTICLES 

In addition to all this controversial and negative work, we 
may take for granted the conventional positive and construc- 
tive arguments for classical studies elaborated by a long line of 
able apologists, except so far as we have occasion to summarize 
or refer to them in the course of this review. 1 

These arguments are not exclusive but cumulative. The case 
of the classics does not rest on any one of them and is not im- 
paired by the exaggerated importance that mistaken zeal may 
attribute to any one. Those who still harp on the superiority of 
the classics as discipline 2 do not therefore "tacitly acknowledge 
themselves beaten on the point of their intrinsic value" 3 and 
those who prefer to emphasize the "necessity of the ancient 
classics" for the understanding of modern life and letters 4 may 
still believe that high-school Latin is the best instrument of disci- 
pline available in secondary education. 5 

The March number of the Classical Journal tabulates the 
aims of classical study as stated by teachers in response to a 
questionnaire. Thirty teachers aim at mental training, 29 at 
literary appreciation, 26 at power of expression, 26 at the rela- 
tion of the ancients to us, 26 at ability to read, 15 at general 
linguistic training, 8 at grammar, 6 at acquaintance with Greek 
and Latin literature. Obviously there is nothing incompatible in 
these aims. It is a question of emphasis, the needs of the class, 
the ability, training, and tastes of the teacher. A faddist may 
ride his hobby to death, whether it be optatives, or lantern slides, 

a See supra, p. 585, n. 3; infra, p. 613-17. For some earlier apologies 
and discussions see Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, II, 18, 51, 
71, 125, 130, 151, 171, 181, 209, 256; also the writers quoted in Taylor, 
Classical Study: Its Value Illustrated (Andover, 1870). Cf. further W. 
G. C. in Cambridge Essays (1855), 282; Essays on a Liberal Education 
(1867); Arnold in Higher Schools in Germany, and A French Eton; Field, 
Lyttleton, and Rendall in Essays on Education by members of the XIII 
(London, 1891); Goodwin, Educat. Rev., IX, 33s; Postgate, "Are the Clas- 
sics to Go?" Fortnightly, LXXVIII, 866 ff. ; West, "Must the Classics 
Go?" N. A. Rev., CXXXVIII, 151; Kelsey; "Position of Latin and 
Greek in American Education," Educat. Rev., XXXIII, 162; Clapp, Over- 
land, XXVIII, 93 ff- ; T. Rice Holmes, "The Crusade Against the Classics," 
National Rev., XLII, 97 ff.; Freeman in Macmillan, LXIII, 321 ff. ; An- 
drew Lang in Living Age, CCXLV, 765 ff . ; J. C. Collins, Fortnightly, 
LXXXIII, 260 ff.; T. E. Page, Educat. Rev., XXXIV, 144; Manatt, N. Y. 
Evening Post, August 18, 1906; Anatole France, "Pour le Latin," Vie lit- 
tdraire, I, 281; Brunetiere, "La question du Latin," Revue des deux 
mondes, Dec. 15, 1885. 

2 E.g., Professor Sidney G. Ashmore, The Classics and Modern Train- 
ing, chap. i. See supra, 588, n. 11-12. 

3 Gildersleeve, op. cit., 15. 

4 Gildersleeve, South. Quart., XXVI, 145. 

1 Cf. Bennett and Bristol, The Teaching of Latin and Greek, chap, i, 
and Bristol in Educ. Rev., XXXVII, 243-51. 



LATIN AND GREEK 31 

or parallel passages from the poets. But in return, the good 
teacher will almost in the same breath translate a great poetic 
sentence, bring out its relations to the whole of which it is a 
part, make its musical rhythm felt by appropriate declamation, 
explain a historical or an antiquarian allusion, call attention to a 
dialectic form, put a question about a peculiar use of the optative, 
compare the imagery with similar figures of speech in ancient 
and modern poetry, and use the whole as a text for a little dis- 
course on the difference between the classical and the modern or 
romantic spirit ; so that you shall not know whether he is teach- 
ing science or art, language or literature, grammar, rhetoric, 
psychology, or sociology, because he is really teaching the ele- 
ments and indispensable prerequisites of all. 

Similarly of the diverse considerations urged by former 
apologists and the contributors to these symposia. The case of 
the classics rests on no one taken singly but on their conjoint 
force, and it is not really weakened by the disproportionate stress . 
sometimes laid on the weaker arguments. The illumination or 
scientific terminology, for example, is a minor and secondary 
utility of a little knowledge of Greek and Latin on which the 
biologist or physician is especially apt, perhaps over much, to in- 
sist. That is his contribution. He does not mean to rest the 
case on that. He is not answered by the argument that "ten or 
twelve years" of study is too big a price to pay for this result 
and that terminology can be learned from glossaries. For a very 
slight knowledge of the languages makes an immense difference 
in the intelligence with which the dictionary or the glossary of 
scientific terms is consulted and the vividness with which its 
statements are realized. One or two years will yield a good deal 
of that particular utility, and the question for the teacher of sci- 
ence or medicine is whether any other non-professional college 
study is likely to be more "useful" to his students. 1 So in argu- 
ing that the classics give the engineer a power of expression 
which he requires for use as well as for ornament, Professor 
Sadler 2 is not committing himself or us to the proposition that 
none but classicists write well and all classicists do. He simply 
means what all experience proves, that the study of the classics 
is on the whole an excellent training in expression, 3 perhaps 

1 See Dr. Vaughan in School Rev. (1906), 392. 

' School Rev. (1906), 402-5. 

* A writer in Educ. Rev., XXXVIII, 88-90, argues that the differ- 
ence of pronunciation makes Latin useless to the English of the high- 
school student. 



32 SELECTED ARTICLES 

a better one than the unpremeditated effusions of "daily 
themes" 1 and that discipline in the power of exact and lucid 
expression is a utility for the engineer. 2 Again, Mr. Kelsey 
would be the last to rest the case for the classics on the fact that 
the wider secondary study of Greek would leave the door of 
choice for the profession of the ministry open to a large number 
of desirable candidates who now find too late that they lack the 
indispensable preparation. 3 But it is a real if minor considera- 
tion to be counted in the sum. 

All of these contributions from the professions take for 
granted the general discipline and cultural values of the classics, 
and presuppose the fact pointed out by Mr. Loeb and others, 
that the direct business and technical utilitarian value of the so- 
called practical college courses is very slight. On this assump- 
tion, they supplement the ideal values of the classics by showing 
that, in the jargon of modern pedagogy, they also possess 
"adjustment values" for other professions than theology and 
literature.' 

One consideration, however, which constantly recurs in these 
discussions is fundamental. It is the training which the classics 
give in the art of interpretation. Classicists sometimes claim for 
and scientific men concede too much to the study of the classics 
as a means of developing the powers of expression. 4 They 
underestimate its value as a discipline of the intelligence. 5 They 
appreciate its stimulus to emotion. They fail to apprehend its 
subtler effect in blending and harmonizing the two — suflusing 
thought with feeling, informing feeling with thought. In con- 
troversy Huxley and Tyndall were fond of pointing out that the 

1 Cf. Mr. Barrett Wendell's sad surmise (The Mystery of Education, 
175) that perhaps the reason why the up-to-date Harvard student doesn't 
write like Addison is that Addison "had never studied English composi- 
tion as a thing apart." But Addison had studied Latin composition and 
had a very pretty knack of turning Latin verses. 

J Cf. Outlook, XCIII (1907), 87. 

8 School Rev. (1908), 567-79. 

4 Huxley, op. cit., 130. 

6 Bentley's Dissertation on Phalaris, the type and model of philological 
method, has been aptly styled "a relentless syllogism." No one can com- 
pare the discourses of Renan and Pasteur at the French Academy or the 
Romanes lectures of Jebb (1899) and Professor Lankester (1904) with- 
out feeling that the superiority of the trained classical philologian is not 
solely or mainly "in the graces." It is in the intellectual qualities of 
subtlety, wit, sanity, breadth, coherence, and closeness of cogent dialectic 
that his advantage is most conspicuous. As we are speaking of "dis- 
ciplinary values" it would be beside the mark to allege what Renan and 
Jebb would be the first to admit, that Pasteur's work was of greater 
service to mankind than theirs. 



LATIN AND GREEK 33 

leaders of science expressed themselves with rather more vigor, 
point, and precision than the ordinary classicist. And their own 
vivid and fluent eloquence drove the argument home. In general, 
however, men of science are only too ready to concede with the 
irony which apes humility that their training has not supplied the 
graces and literary refinements that are supposed to qualify a 
man to shine after dinner or to make a good appearance on the 
platform. But the gifts of eloquence and fluency are sparks of 
natural endowment which science perhaps quite as often as phil- 
ology fans into flame. 1 Scientific men may make haste to for- 
get their Latin as Latin. But the mere classicist observes with 
admiring despair their mastery of the polysyllabic Latinized vo- 
cabulary of English. Where he says "if so" they say "in the con- 
templated eventuality." We must abate our claim that only the 
classics make men eloquent and emphatic in the expression of 
their own thoughts. 

But it is impossible to claim too much for them as a disci- 
pline in the all-important art of interpreting the expressed 
thought of others. There is no other exercise available for 
educational purposes that can compare in this respect with the 
daily graduated critical classroom translation and interpretation 
of classical texts. 2 The instinctively sane judgment of intended 
meanings, the analytic power of rational interpretation — these, 
natural gifts being equal, are the distinctive marks of the student 
of classics, in verying degrees, from the secondary-school Latin- 
ist, who at least has some inkling of the general implicit logic 
and structure of language, to the collegian who has been exer- 
cised in the equivocations of idiom and synonym, and the finished 
master who can weigh all the nice considerations that determine 
the precise shade of meaning or tone of feeling in a speech in 
Thucydides, a lyric of Aeschylus, a half-jesting, half-serious 
argument in Plato. Information, knowledge, culture, originality, 
eloquence, genius may exist without a classical training; the 
critical sense and a sound feeling for the relativity of meaning 
rarely, if ever. I have never met in private life or encountered 
in literature a thinker wholly disdainful of the discipline of the 
classics who did not betray his deficiency in this respect. I say 

1 On the bad style of classicists cf. Pop. Sci. Mo., I. 707; Gildersleeve, 
op. cit., 49 ; Spencer, Study of Sociology, 264. 

2 The argument of Webster {Forum, XXVIII, 459 ff.) that the 
study of a language makes almost no demands upon the reasoning powers 
refutes itself; cf. Jebb, op. cit., 558; Laurie, Lectures on Languages and 
Linguistic Method, 9-10; Fouillee, 102-3. 



34 SELECTED ARTICLES 

in all seriousness that what chiefly surprises a well-trained classi- 
cist in the controversial and popular writings of scientific men, 
especially in the case of the pseudo- or demi-sciences, 1 is not 
any awkwardness of style or defect in "culture," but the quality 
of the dialectic and logic, the irrelevancies, the elaborations of 
metaphors from illustrations into arguments, 2 the disproportion- 
ate emphasis upon trifles and truisms, 3 the ignoring of the 
issue, 4 the naive dependence on authority, 5 the outbursts of 
quaint unction and ornate rhetoric, 6 the constant liability to 

1 Illustrations of this point are too numerous to quote here, but the 
repeated misapprehensions of Plato's plainest meanings in Education as 
Adjustment, 19, 62, 63, 90, by M. V. O'Shea, professor of the "science" 
and art of education in the University of Wisconsin, are typical. If such 
are the standards of accuracy and criticism of the professor of the science, 
what will be those of the novices? 

2 Huxley, Science and Education, 81 ff.; Spencer, passim; Dr. George 
E. Dawson, "Parasitic Culture," Pop. Sci. Monthly, September, 1910. 

3 Cf. in Culture Demanded by Modern Life Paget's page on the 
"certainty that continual or irregular feeding is contrary to the economy 
of the human stomach." 

4 E.g., Huxley's extension of "nature" to include "men and their 
ways," and the fashioning of the affections and of the will," Science and 
Education, 83. 

B Typical examples are the use that they make as ultimate authorities 
of Grote's Plato, Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy, Lange's His- 
tory of Materialism, and Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe. 
Cf. Tyndall, Belfast Address, "And I have entire confidence in Dr. 
Draper." Huxley on the study of zoology: "What books shall I read? 
None; write your notes out; come to me for the explanation of anything 
that you cannot understand." Neither Youmans nor Herbert Spencer 
could ever be brought to admit the gross error into which Spencer was 
led {Data of Ethics, § 19), by mistinterpreting Bohn's mistranslation of 
Plato's Republic, 339D. For another example, cf. Jhering ap. Zielinski, 
in. Huxley's contrast between history and laboratory science (p. 126) 
is fallacious. He fails to see that the student of science innocently trans- 
fers to literature, history, and language his habit of accepting on fait! 
all experimental results outside of his particular specialty, while the 
student of classical philology acquires the habit of testing by the original 
evidence every statement that he hears from his teacher or reads in his 
textbooks. Cf. Smith, supra, p. 589, «• 17; Fouillee op. cit., 62-63, 109. 

Those who repeat (e.g. Webster, Forum, XXVII, 453) after Spencer 
(Education, 79) that classical training establishes the habit of blind sub- 
mission to the authority of grammar, lexicon, or teacher simply do not 
know what goes on in a good classroom. See Zielinski, op. cit., 90-92. 
Cf the noble passage in Mill, op. cit., IV, 355, on the spirit of inquiry 
in Plato and Aristotle which Huxley (op. cit. 211), transfers verbatim to 
science, ignoring the all-important qualification, "on those subjects which 
remain' matters of controversy from the difficulty or impossibility of bring- 
ing them to an experimental test." Cf. Jebb, appendix to Sophocles O. T., 
219. "It is among the advantages and the < pleasures of classical study 
that it gives scope for such discussions as this passage (0. T., 44-45) has 
evoked." 

8 "The suction pump is but an imitation of the first act of every new- 
born infant, nor do I think it calculated to lessen that infant's reverence, 
when his riper experience shows him that the atmosphere was his 
helper in extracting the first draught from his mother's bosom" (Tyndall, 
on the "Study of Physics.") 



LATIN AND GREEK 35 

stumble like a child, or quibble like a sophist, 1 with regard to 
the fair presumptive meaning of alien, divergent, or hostile utter- 
ances. 2 There is for them no intermediate between the rigid, 
unequivocal scientific formula and mere rhetoric or sophistry, be- 
cause they have never been trained to the apprehension of all 
recorded speech as a text whose full meaning can be ascertained 
only by a critical, historical, and philological interpretation of 
the context. The way in which the classics provide us with this 
training can be fully appreciated only through experience. 3 I 
have attempted a description elsewhere in this journal, 4 and it 
has often been set forth by others, and most admirably by the 
representatives of the law in these symposia. 5 The law itself is 
" the only discipline comparable to the classics in this regard. 6 
But while more severe perhaps and strictly intellectual it is 
narrower in its range 7 and does not include the union of feeling 
and intelligence which makes the study of the classics ail in- 
comparable method of general education. For this reason though 
the law would be the best available substitute for the discipline 
of the classics, thoughtful lawyers would be the last to advocate 
the substitution. 

But it is time to turn from these special considerations to a 
broader view of the whole subject. Classical education is not 
an academic superstition, . an irrational survival of the Renais- 
sance. 8 It is a universal phenomenon of civilization. Higher 
non-vocational education has always been largely literary and 
linguistic, and it has always been based on a literature distin- 
guished from the ephemeral productivity of the hour as classic. 

1 Paget, op. cit., p. 183: "The student of nature's purposes should 
surely be averse from leading a purposeless existence." 

2 Spencer, passim; Huxley, op. cit., 144: "If their common outfit 
draws nothing from the stores of physical science." Both Mill and Arnold 
insist on acquaintance with the results of science. Cf. too Huxley's sub- 
stitution of Middle Ages for Renaissance (ibid., 149-50) and his conse- 
quent contradiction of his own admission on p. 209, "that the study of 
classical literature familiarized men with ideas of the order of nature." 

3 Zielinski, op. cit., 31 ff. 

4 V, 225-29. 

5 Cf. Starr on the discipline of the judgment and training in the in- 
terpretation of texts, School Rev. (1907), 412, 415; Evans, ibid., 421. Fos- 
ter, ibid. (1909), 377-79. 

a Whewell adds that it is like mathematics, essentially deductive. With- 
out committing ourselves to the "inductive method of learning languages" 
we may say that the interpretation of a classic text is often an excellent 
exercise in "inductive-observant" thinking. 

7 Hutchins, ibid. (1907), 427-28. 

8 For this commonplace see infra, p. 601. 



36 SELECTED ARTICLES 

It was so at Rome, in China, in Hindustan, and among the Arabs. 
The Greeks, whose supreme originality makes them an exception 
to every rule, are only an apparent exception to this — they studied 
Homer 1 and their own older classics to form, not inform, their 
minds. 2 This universal tendency is only in part explained by 
the religious or superstitious reverence for sacred texts. It is 
in the main due to an instinctive perception of the principles on 
which the case for the classics still rests. The education of those 
who can afford time for non-vocational study is not in the nar- 
rower or more immediate sense of the words a "preparation for 
life" 3 but, from the point of view of the individual, a develop- 
ment of the faculties; from the point of view of society, the 
transmission of a cultural, social, moral tradition.* It must be 
a broad discipline of the intellectual powers that shall at the 
same time attune the aesthetic and the moral feelings to a cer- 
tain key. 5 No study but that of language and literature can do 
this, and it is best done through an older and more synthetic 
form of language and a literature that is, in relation to the stu- 
dent and his environment, classic. 6 This is the meaning of the 
late W. T. Harris's somewhat cryptic Hegelism that self-aliena- 
tion is necessary to self-knowledge. 7 Or to put it more con- 
cretely, the critical interpretation or translation of such a lan- 
guage supplies the simplest and most. effective all-round disci- 
pline of the greatest number of faculties. The ideal form and 
content of such a literature elevated above the trivialities, dis- 
engaged from the complexities, disinterested in the conflicts of 
contemporary life 8 awakens the aesthetic and literary sense, 9 

1 Cf . Breal, 553: "On oublie qu'ils avaient leur antiquite dans l'epopee." 

2 Cf . Bain, Contemp. Rev. xxxv, 837; "The fact that the Greeks were 
not acquainted with any language but their own ... I have never 
known any attempt to parry this thrust." 

8 For such tautologous formulas as definitions of education cf. my 
"Discipline in Modern Education," The Bookman (March, 1906), 94: to 
the list there given add "Adjustment," which obviously includes every- 
thing and therefore anything. 

4 See Brunetiere, op. cit., 406, and the admirable work of Fouillee, 
Education from a National Standpoint, in Appleton's "International Edu- 
cation Series," p. 54. and passim. 

5 Arnold's "relating what we have learnt ... to the sense for 
conduct and the sense for beauty." 

8 "There are five times as many mental processes to undertake in 
translating from Latin and Greek into English as there are in translating 
a modern language." Lord Goschen; cf. supra, n. 21; infra, n. 99. 

7 "Self-alienation which consists in projecting one's self into the 
idoms of a dead language," etc., etc. — P. R. Shipman, Pop. Sci. Mo., 
XVII, i4S- 

8 Gladstone op. Jebb, 570. 

9 Jebb, 526. Cf. the definition of education as the aesthetic revelation 
of the world. 



LATIN AND GREEK 37 

ennobles and refines feeling. 1 And the very definition of classic 
implies that it is the source and chief depository of the national 
tradition either of religion or culture or both. 

For modern Europe these conditions were fulfilled by the 
study of the classics of Greece and Rome which the Renais- 
sance established in the face of a scholasticism that called itself 
science, 2 and which, adapted to altered conditions, we have still 
to defend against the exclusive pretensions of sciences that, un- 
informed by the temper of humanism, threaten to renew the 
spiritual aridity if not the intellectual futility of scholasticism. 

The debate which began in the reaction from the Renaissance 
and found its first notable expression in the famous "quarrel 
of the ancients and moderns" is now more than two hundred 
years old. 3 New arguments are hardly discoverable at this date. 

1 "Much lost I, something stayed behind, 
A snatch maybe of ancient song; 
Some breathing of a deathless mind, 

Some love of truth, some hate of wrong." — Ionica. 

2 Cf. University of Illinois Studies, III, No. vii, p. 29. 

3 Not to speak of the polemic of the more illiberal Christian fathers 
against "pagan" studies, the controversy could be traced back to the op- 
position of scholasticism and the arts in the mediaeval universities; cf. 
Univ. of III. Studies, III, No. vii, p. 19, 27 ff. Or we could begin in 
full Renaissance with the humanist Vives, advocate of the study of the 
vernacular; with Bacon, who, though himself widely read in the classics 
and writing in Latin, is the chief source of the rhetoric of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth-century polemic of scientific men against the classics; or, 
better yet, with Descartes, who anticipates by two hundred years the type 
of Spencer and Youmans and President Stanley Hall. Cf. in Cousin, 
X, 37s, his funny letter to Madame Elizabeth deploring Queen Christina's 
enthusiasm for Greek. So Spencer more in sorrow than in anger com- 
ments (Autobiog., II, 183) on Mills' Inaugural which Youmans quotes 
not quite ingenuously (Gildersleeve, op. cit., 11) It is easy to cite sporadic 
denunciations of the exclusive study of the classics and satire of bad 
teaching from the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
Sir Thomas Browne, himself steeped in the classics, incidentally writes, 
anticipating Spencer, in the style of Macaulay: " 'Tis an unjust way of 
compute, to magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities and to under- 
value a solid judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of Hector." 
Cf. Rigault's well-known book; Macaulay's "Essay on Sir William 
Temple"; Jebb's Bentley; Brunetiere Hlpoques, 220; Rene Doumie, "La 
Manie de la Modernite, Etudes de Litt. Francaise, III, 1-23; Sandys, 
History of Classical Scholarship, II, 403 ff. For the eighteenth century 
in France with its strange transition from dying pseudo-classicism to the 
second classical renaissance, see the excellent work of Bertrand, Fin du 
Classicisme, and for Germany, see Paulsen, Geschichte des Gelehrten 
Unterrichte, II. In nineteenth-century controversy, the chief epochs are 
marked by (1) Sydney Smith's "Too Much Latin and Greek," Ed. Rev. 
(1809) — mainly an attack on Latin verse, etc. Anticlassicists quote from 
it at second hand "the safe and elegant imbecility of classical learning." 
They should also quote, "up to a certain point we would educate every 
young man in Latin and Greek." (2) Macaulay, "The London Univer- 
sity," Ed. Rev. (1826), a political tract against the Tory opposition in 
Macaulay's most extreme rhetorical style. With the "Essay on Bacon" 
it has served as a repertory of fallacies, and it is probably a chief source 
of Spencer. (3) Spencer's Essay on Education (1858-60), mainly an 
elaboration of the fallacy (anticipated by Plato, Rep., 438E) that knowl- 



38 SELECTED ARTICLES 

At the most we may endeavor to weigh the old ones with more 
discretion, adapt them to the present conditions, and throughout 
to insist on a vital distinction which defines the issue today. I 
refer to the distinction between past adjustments or reductions 
of exclusive or excessive claims of classical studies and present 
efforts and tendencies to abolish them altogether. Here, as often, 
a quantitative distinction becomes qualitative, a difference of de- 
gree passes into a difference of kind. 1 The truism that Greece 
and Rome mean less for us than they did for the men of the 
Renaissance is not even a presumption that they count for little 
or nothing. 2 Apart from all technical considerations of curri- 
cula, degrees, and educational machinery, it is broadly desirable 
that classical studies should continue to hold a place in higher 
education fairly proportionate to their significance for our total 
culture. They will not hold that place if the representatives of 
the scientific and "modern" subjects enter into an unholy alliance 
with the legions of Philistia to swell the unthinking clamor 
against dead languages and useless studies. Whatever the talk- 
ing delegates of science may say in their haste, thoughtful sci- 
entific men 3 require no professor of Greek to tell them that the 

edge of "useful things" is for educational purposes necessarily and always 
the most useful knowledge. To this we may relate the controversies of 
the fifties and sixties and their prolongation to our own time. See the 
various papers dating from 1854 on in Huxley's Science and Education. 
The year 1867 marks a date with Mill's Inaugural and Youmans' Culture 
Demanded by Modern Life; and Essays on a Liberal Education. Before 
the discussion of these had died away in America the conflict was re- 
kindled by Charles Francis Adams' College Fetich, since which it has 
been continuous and can very easily be followed in the indices of the 
Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, the Popular Science Monthly, the various 
journals of education, the Independent, etc. For Germany see Paulsen, 
Geschichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts, II, 441 ff., 595; "Intervention of 
the Emperor," 620 ff. For France cf. Fouilee, 94, and Translator's Pref- 
ace, xiii; Weiss. "L' Education Classique," Revue des deux Mondes, 
1873, V. 392; Brunetiere, "La Question du Latin" (review of Raoul 
Frary), ibid., 1885, VI, 862; Breal, "La Tradition du Latin," ibid., 
CV, SSL 

1 So already Gildersleeve in 1868 (p. 10): "Sydney Smith's complaint 
of 'Too much Latin and Greek' has become the war-cry, 'Little Latin 
and no Greek at all.' " 

1 For this common non sequitur cf. Zielinski, op. cit., 15; Huxley, 
op. cit., 149; Macaulay, passim. The argument is used already by Des- 
cartes. 

3 I cite a few names at random: Berthelot, Science et Morale, 125, 
favors two types of education, "l'un fonde essentiellement sur les lettres 
anciennes," etc. Lord Kelvin, in his Life by Thompson, p. 1115: "I think 
for the sake of mathematicians and science students Cambridge and Ox- 
ford should keep Greek, of which even a very moderate extent is of very 
great value." Humboldt's and Emil du Bois Reymond's views are well 
known (Fouilbfe, op cit., 177). See also President A. C. Humphreys in 
Proceed. Forty-Eighth Ann. Commence. Penn. State Coll., 44. Josiah 
Cook, Pop. Sci. Mo., XXIV, 1 ff. Frederick B. Loomis, Independent, LIX 



LATIN AND GREEK 39 

languages and literatures of the 1300 years of continuous civili- 
zation from Homer to Julian subtend a far larger arc of the 
great circle of knowledge than Sanskrit or Zend or the other 
specialties to which they are so often compared. Whether they 
hold this place by their intrinsic beauty and sublimity, 1 by "the 
grand simplicity of their statement of the everlasting problems 
of human life, 2 by their disciplinary value, by their enormous 
contribution of facts to the mental and moral and historical sci- 
ences 3 and the "wisdom of life," 4 by their renewal of the in- 
tellectual life of Europe at the Renaissance and yet again at the 
German revival and reorganization of science at the close of the 
eighteenth century, or as the sources and inspiration of modern 
literature 5 and by their still dominant influence in the greatest 
English poets of the nineteenth century or by all these things 
together, matters not. They hold the place, and they cannot be 
relegated to the position of erudite specialties without an emascu- 
lation of our discipline and an impoverishment of our culture. 6 
But controversy like all literary forms tends to stereotype 
itself. Educational conventions still echo to denunciation of 
abuses as obsolete as the Inquisition. Language that would be 
an exaggeration if used of the most hide-bound old-style, Latin 
verse writing English public school, the narrowest French lycee, 

(1905), 486. Cf. Whitman, Barnes, Pierce, Dabney, Dana in the sym- 
posium of April 3, 1909. The hostile testimony (e.g., of Nef) refers 
largely to required or excessive classics. Cf. the fine words of Huxley, 
Science and Education, 98 and 182. Tyndall, Fragments of Science 
("Home Library"), 415. Thayer in St. Louis Congress, VI, 218: "When 
in the period of so-called secondary education it is proposed to substi- 
tute the study of the natural sciences for a good training in the human- 
ities, there is danger of drying up some of the sources from which this 
very scientific expansion has sprung." For German scientific men see 
Holmes, Nat. Rev., XLII, 103 ff. 

1 Jebb, 529; Mill, op, cit., IV, 352: "Compositions which from the 
altered conditions of human life are likely to be seldom paralleled in 
their sustained excellence by the times to come." 

2 Huxley, Science and Education, 98. 

3 For the propaedeutic implicit *or indirect educational values of 
classical study cf. Shorey in School Rev., V, 226-27; the illustrations 
drawn from his own teaching by Zielinski, op. cit., 99 ff. ("Ein Philolog 
kann alles brauchen") ; Shorey, "Philology and _ Classical Philology," 
Class. Rev., I, 182-83 ff. ; Matthew Arnold's charming "Speech at Eton," 
Irish Essays, V; Wenley, "The Nature of Culture Studies," School Rev., 
June, 1905. 

4 Mill, op. cit., IV, 354 ff. ; Gildersleeve, op. cit., 21; Jebb, op. cit., 540. 
B Jebb, op. cit., 54; infra, p. 612. 

6 Cf. among countless quotable utterances to this effect from the chief 
writers of the nineteenth century, Richter cited by Zielinski, op. cit., 109, 
and Laurie, op. cit., 186: "Mankind would sink into a bottomless abyss 
if our youth on their journey to the fair of life did not pass through 
the tranquil and noble shrine of antiquity." Froude, Words About Ox- 
ford: "This would be to exclude ourselves from an acquaintance with 
all past time except in monkish fiction," etc. 



40 SELECTED ARTICLES 

is applied to "the tyranny of the classics" in high schools where 
the teacher is forbidden to use the Bible and is applauded for 
taking the daily newspaper as a textbook. The protests of 
French liberals against the former official requirement of a class- 
ical education for access to all professions and public offices are 
transferred to American conditions to which they are wholly 
inapplicable. 1 The arguments of Sydney Smith denouncing 
compulsory Latin verse writing and of Macaulay holding a brief 
for the University of London against the obstructionist preju- 
dices of Oxford or elaborating a false antithesis between the 
Baconian and the Platonic philosophy are taken from the con- 
text 2 and used in support of policies which Sydney Smith and 
Macaulay would have been the first to deplore. 

It is time to recognize that the work of Huxley, Tyndall, 
Spencer, Youmans, and President Eliot has been done once for 
all. "The mere man of letters who affects to ignore and despise 
science" may have existed in Huxley's England. Today he is 
as extinct as the dodo. The "enemies of science" of whom Pro- 
fessor Lankester complains are speech automatisms surviving in 
the rhetoric of science. 

The victory of our scientific colleagues is overwhelming, and 
the Cinderella 3 pose is an anachronism. 4 Huxley was fighting 
to reform schools in which all boys, whatever their tastes, were 
compelled to compose Latin verses, and in which, as he said, with 
gross but then pardonable exaggeration, twelve years' hard study 
of Greek left the victim unable to construe a page of easy prose. 
And so today professors of science who are not quite Huxleys 
step out of their palatial laboratories and splendidly equipped 
offices to thunder against the obstruction of modern progress by 
classics in schools where not 2 per cent of the students learn -the 
Greek alphabet, where no one is required to study Latin, and 
few do study it more than two or three years. They forget that 
if Huxley were with us today he would probably be pleading for 
a revival of classical studies. 5 Whatever the grievances of the 
past, present attacks on the classics are inspired by the revolt 
against discipline and hard work, the impatience of all serious 

1 See Shorey in Proc. $th Conf. Assoc. Am. Univ., 70. 

2 E.g., by Woodward, Proceedings Am. Assoc, for Adv. of Sci., 1907; 
cf. Indep., LXII, 107; and by H. W., "The Battle of the Books," West- 
minster, CLX; 425 ff. 

3 Spencer, op. cit., 87, copied by all his successors. 

4 "It seems clear that science nowadays is proud and not literature." — 
Fouillee, op. cit., 59. 

8 Cf. the enormous concession in Science and Education, 153. 



LATIN AND GREEK 41 

pre-vocational study, the demand for quick utilitarian results, 
and absorption in the up-to-date. 1 Our scientific colleagues who 
invoke these sentiments against us will find that they are play- 
ing with fire and enlisting allies whom they cannot control. The 
public will see no logical halting-place between their position 
and that of Mr. Crane of Chicago. The boy whom they have 
encouraged to shirk the discipline of Latin will find mathematics 
and physics still more irksome. The professional constituency 
of engineers and chemical experts they will retain. But the 
majority will go snap hunting in the happy fields of English 
literature and the social sciences. Let not our scientific col- 
leagues deceive themselves. They are more allied to us by the 
severity and definiteness of their discipline than divided by differ- 
ences of matter and method. In the fundamental classification of 
studies into those which exercise and those which titillate the 
mind they belong with us. You cannot really teach anything by 
lectures, experience meetings, heart-to-heart talks, the pseudo- 
Socratic method, and expansion of the student's personality. But 
you cannot even pretend to teach classics and the exact sciences 
in this way. In these days that is a bond. As serious workers 
and teachers you belong with us. The allies whom you en- 
courage to sap our discipline with the "soft moisture of irrele- 
vant sentimentality" will not stop there. They are past masters 
in what Mrs Wharton calls the art of converting second-hand 
ideas into first-hand emotions. They will humanize your cold 
abstract sciences in a way that will surprise you. I quote from 
the report of a recent educational conference: — 

At 3 p. m. Miss N. Andrews, principal of the Happy Grove Girls' 
School, conducted a regular junior class meeting. A very helpful feature 
of this meeting was an illustration by the use of iodine and hyposulphite 
of soda, showing how sin defiles the heart, and how the blood of Jesus 
can cleanse it. 

When this generation of kindergarten Christian Scientists 
arrives in your laboratories you will wish too late that they had 
been set to gnaw the file of Latin grammar for a year or two. 2 
You will find a new meaning in Professor Karl Pearson's state- 
ment 3 that the most valuable acquisitions of his early education 
were the notions of method which he derived from Greek gram- 

1 Cf. the brilliant and caustic paper by Mrs. Emily James Putnam in 
Putnam's, III, 418; Zielinski, op. cit., 206. 

2 Cf. Sadler in School Rev. (1906), 403: "What .... can be done 
in a subject such as physiology when," etc. 

* Grammar of Science. 



42 SELECTED ARTICLES 

mar. 1 You will admit that after all there may be something in 
Anatole France's warning that since the methods of science ex- 
ceed the limitations of children the teacher will confine himself 
to the terminology. You will be able to interpret Brunetiere's 
remark that neither infancy nor youth can support the intoxica- 
tion with which science at first dazes its neophytes, and you will 
sadly verify the accomplishment of George Eliot's prophecy of a 
generation "dizzy with indigestion of recent science and phil- 
osophy." 

Such terms as "culture," "discipline," "utility," a "liberal" 
education have been much bandied about in idle controversy. 2 
They are all, perhaps, equivocal or question-begging, and hardly 
admit of authoritative definition. Yet you all understand them 
well enough to know what I mean by saying that the study of 
the exact sciences yields utility, discipline, and a kind of culture ; 
that classics give culture, discipline, and a kind of utility; and 
that today they are conjointly opposed to a vast array of miscel- 
laneous "free electives" which are more popular largely because 
as at present taught they demand and impart neither discipline 
nor culture nor utility, but only information, entertainment, and 
intellectual dissipation. These studies fall into two chief groups, 
the demi-sciences, that is, the so-called moral and social sciences, 
and modern linguistic and literary studies. I intend no dis- 
paragement by the term demi-sciences. There is no higher uni- 
versity work than pioneer exploration of subjects not yet 
definitely constituted as sciences. But the personal magnetism 
in the classroom of a Giddings, a Small, a Vincent, a Ross, a 
Cooley should not blind us to the fact that these studies demand, 
as Plato said, 3 the severest, not the loosest, preparatory training, 
and that, 'freely elected," without such preparation, they will 
merely muddle the mind of the average American undergraduate. 

The outspoken expression of this opinion, which the majority 
of classicists share, threatens to convert the old warfare of 
science and classics into a conflict between classics and the social 

1 Cf. also Fouillee, op. cit., 66, top. 

1 Cf. Huxley, op. cit., 141, on "Real Culture"; Flexner in Science, 
XXIX, 370; Frederick Harrison's satire on Arnold's "Culture and An- 
archy," with Arnold's reply; Youmans' "The Culture Demanded by Mod- 
ern Life"; Essays on a Liberal Education, Macmillan, 1867; Newcomb, 
"What is a Liberal Education?" in Science, III, 435; Woodward in 
Science, XIV, 476; Huxley, op. cit., 86; Mrs. Emily James Putnam, 
Putnam's, III, 421. 

* Cf. my paper on "Some Ideals of Education in Plato's Republic," 
Educational Bi-Monthly, February, 1908. 



LATIN AND GREEK 43 

sciences. 1 For the history of this merry war we cannot delay. 
One point only concerns us here. Sociology and the new psy- 
chology have staked out the entire coast of the unknown conti- 
nent of knowledge and claim all the hinterland. Abstractly and 
a priori this is plausible enough. An infinite psychologist could 
pronounce on the credibility of a witness, advise infallibly on the 
choice of a vocation, and prescribe the proper intellectual diet 
for every idiosyncrasy. In a finite psychologist it is — well, this 
is an age of advertising. 

Like claims could be made for an abstract or ideal sociology. 
Education is preparation for life, and human life and mind exist 
and develop only in and through society. 2 After the psycholo- 
gist has annexed everything else, the sociologist may logically 
swallow him, while the physiologist lies in wait for both. They 
may be left to fight that out — a hundred or a thousand years 
hence. But today there is no science of psychology, 3 sociology, 
or pedagogy that can pronounce with any authority on either the 
aims or the methods of education. 4 The confident affirmations 
of our colleagues in these departments are not, then, to be re- 
ceived as the pronouncements of experts, but as the opinions of 
observers who like ourselves may be partisans. 5 

Throughout this discusion I have taken for granted the 
general belief of educators, statesmen, and the man in the street, 
from Plato and Aristole to John Stuart Mill, Faraday, 6 
Lincoln, 7 President Taft 8 and Anatole France, that there is 
such a thing as intellectual discipline, and that some studies are a 

1 Many representatives of the mental and moral sciences, of course, 
recognize that classics are still the best available propaedeutic for them; 
notably Fouillee, and with some reserves Giddings. 

1 To readers of Plato's Protagoras and Republic, there is something 
supremely funny in the statement that "the most important general advance 
[in psychology from 1881 to 1906] seems to be the recognition that the mind 
of the human adult is a social product." — E. Ray Lankester, The King- 
dom of Man, 122. 

* Cf. Jowett's Plato, IV, 17s, "On the nature and limits of Psychology." 

4 Cf . Zielinski, op. cit., 23; James, Talks to Teachers, 130-37; Anatole 
France, Le Jar din d' Epicure, 218: "Quand la biologie sera constitute^ 
c'est a dire dans quelques millions d'annees, on pourra peut-etre con- 
struire une sociologie"; Shorey, Class, Jour., I, 187; St. Louis Congress, 
III, 370, 37S-76. 

e Observe the disinterested scientific temper in which Superintendent 
Harris discusses the psychology of formal discipline: "But Greek is already 
a vanishing element in our secondary schools, and it needs but a few 
more strokes to put it entirely hors de combat." — Education, XXV, 426. 

8 Culture Demanded by Modern Life, 200. 

T See Croly, Promise of American Life, 91-92. 

8 Bryn Mawr Alumnae Quarterly, IV, No. 2, 79. 



44 SELECTED ARTICLES 

better mental gymnastic than others. This, like other notions of 
"common-sense," is subject to all due qualifications and limita- 
tions. But it is now denied altogether, and the authority of 
Plato, Mill, Faraday, or Lincoln is met by the names of Hins- 
dale, O'Shea, Bagley, Horn, Thorndike, Bolton, and DeGarmo. 
Tastes in authorities differ. But these gentlemen are cited, not 
as authorities, but as experts who have proved by scientific ex- 
periment and ratiocination that mental discipline is a myth. 
There is no such proof, and no prospect of it. There are in 
general no laboratory experiments that teach us anything about 
the higher mental processes which we cannot observe and infer 
by better and more natural methods. 1 Still less are there any 
that can even approximate to the solution of the complicated 
problem of the total value and effect of a course of study. There 
is no authentic deliverance of science here to oppose to the vast 
presumption of common-sense and the belief of the majority of 
educated and practical men. 2 And we are therefore still entitled 
to ask, If you reject the classics and the elective system is a 
failure, what are you prepared to substitute? 3 Theoretically 
there are alternatives which, not being a fanatic, I would gladly 

1 Inserting needles into holes, estimating areas, drawing with the 
hand hidden behind a screen, etc., etc., are all falsifying simplifications 
of the infinitely complex problem to the solution of which they may or 
may not lead in the years to come. Nor despite Dr. Dawson's warning 
against "neurones and connecting fibres fashioned through and through 
for the study of the Latin language," do we know enough about "localiza- 
tion of function" to argue the question intelligently on this basis. The 
leading opponents of the idea of mental discipline, whenever they forget 
themselves, all take it for granted, or make self-stultifying concessions to it. 

J Cf . Zielinski, op. cit., 12, 22; Plato, Republic, 526B, 527D. There 
is no space to continue the discussion here. ■ But I doubt whether many 
competent psychologists will be willing seriously to maintain that serious 
results have as yet been achieved. The whole recent "unsettlement of 
the doctrine of formal discipline" took its start as a polemical move and 
not as a disinterested scientific investigation. And it still bears the im- 
press of its origin. It was perhaps suggested by Youmans' essay on 
"Mental Discipline in Education," introductory to The Culture Demanded 
by Modern Life. Cf. O'Shea, Education as Adjustment, ix: "My chief 
motive .... is to try to show that the doctrine of formal training, 
etc., etc."; Heck, Mental Discipline and Educational Values, I, strangely 
says, after Monroe, that the doctrine of formal discipline was first clearly 
formulated in the seventeenth century in defense of classical studies. 
Professor Bagley, The Educative Process, 211, gravely alleges against the 
doctrine his experience that a year of habituation to hard work at his 
desk did not discipline him out of a disinclination to regular work on 
the farm in his summer vacation. This may pair off with the "experi- 
ments" _ which show that students who are compelled to prepare neat 
papers in one subject will not spontaneously take the same extra pains 
in other classrooms {ibid., 208.) 

8 Cf . Lowell, Prose Works, VI, 166: "We know not whither other 
studies will lead us. . . . We do know to what summits .... this 
has led and what the many-sided outlook thence." 



LATIN AND GREEK 45 

see organized into a rational group system. 1 But the practical 
alternative which anti-classical fanaticism at present offers is 
formulated by one of your own faculty with the unconscious 
irony of italics as "Anything and everything connected with 
modern life" — a large order. 2 Professor King would of course 
know how to apply this formula with discretion. But he would 
perhaps be somewhat dismayed to see how it is applied in the 
short course of the Cokato High School by an enthusiastic con- 
vertite who declares that "we are doing some intensive work 
in spots out in this state regardless of college requirements in 
English or any other requirements this side of the moon." 

The modern literary and linguistic group of studies presents 
no problem in theory. There may be some question how much 
Latin those students whose education ends with the high school 
can afford to take. But the more advanced collegiate and uni- 
versity study of English, modern languages, history, and phi- 
losophy without any preparation in classics is a sorry jest. 3 
The teachers themselves are aware of this when not misled by 
departmental rivalries or cowed by fatalistic acquiescence in 
the low standards which the spoiled American boy and the 
indulgent American parent are forcing upon our schools. 4 
They too must be brought to realize that the cause of the higher 
culture is one and their lot is bound up with ours. 5 Our 
colleagues in modern languages have had their warning from 
President Schurman. They cannot join the hue and cry against 
dead classics and retain their seminars in Dante and Old French 
and their culture courses in Racine and Goethe. For the prac- 
tical man Corneille and Lessing are as dead as Homer and 

1 Cf. Fouillee, op. cit., 151-52, and Shorey, in Proceedings of the 
Fifth Conference of the Associations of American Universities (February, 
1904. 66-67), an <i i n the Proceedings of the International Congress of Edu- 
cation (Chicago, 1893, 138). 

3 Educational Review, XXXIII, 469. For a good criticism of this 
ideal, cf. T. E. Page, in Edinburgh Review, XXXIV, 144; Fouillee, op. 
cit., 136 ff. 

3 See Churton Collins, "Greek at the Universities," Fortnightly (1905), 
260-71. 

4 Cf. Grandgent, "French as a Substitute for Latin," School Review, 
XII, 462-67; Warren, Methods of Teaching Modern Languages, 114: "The 
first duty of modern language instructors is to preserve as far as possible 
the advantages derived from the study of the displaced languages, Greek 
and Latin." As Fouillee says (p. 156), the alternative is either the 
hotel waiter's cheap polyglotism or the study of living languages by the 
critical methods applied to the languages called dead. Cf. Jebb. op. cit., 
558. Lowell, op. cit., 156: "In a way that demands toil nd thought 
as Greek and Latin, and they only, used to be taught." 

5 Lowell, op. cit., 157. 



46 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Aristotele. His only use for French is "to fight the battle of 
life — with waiters in French restaurants." Cornell University, 
possessing the finest Dante library in the country, had not a 
single student of Dante in 1904. 1 After Greek, Latin, and 
after Latin, all literary, historical, and philological study of 
French and German. Convert your departments into Berlitz 
schools of languages. It is that which you are educating the 
public to demand, and that is all your students will be capable 
of. They already complain that anything older or harder than 
Labische is difficult and useless. 2 

The teachers of English may lay the same warning to heart. 
Shakespeare is the belated bard of feudalism. Milton's diction 
is as obsolete to the readers of Mr. George Ade as his theology. 
Tennyson is a superannuated representative of the Mid- Victorian 
compromise. Literature dates from Robert Louis Stevenson; 
and Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Chesterton are not 
only clever fellows and shrewd advertisers, but profound think- 
ers. The Bible, too, is an obsolete and forgotten classic. There 
is nothing that the unhappy teachers of English can presuppose 
today. They have sowed the wind and are reaping the whirl- 
wind. Here is a letter recently addressed to the dramatic critic 
of a great newspaper: — 

"I would like to undertake a course of reading on the literature of 
the stage. . . I don't want to be directed to Shakespeare, or the 
Greek dramatists, or to Bell's British theatre or to any other compendium 
of chestnuts that a man with a healthy interest in life would rather saw 
wood than read. 3 I love the theatre and would like to extend my knowl- 
edge if any of the live stuff is in print." 

There you have the answer to Huxley's oft-repeated argument :— 
"If an Englishman cannot get literary culture out of his Bible, his 
Shakespeare, and his Milton, neither in my belief will the pro- 

1 Forman, op. cit., 15. 

2 Whatever may be said of the difficulty of Latin syntax or Greek 
irregular verbs, it is no paradox to maintain that the ancient classics are 
more simple, sane, direct, and lucid, and therefore not only a better edu- 
cational instrument but easier than the masterpieces of modern literature 
would be if seriously taught. Cf. Gildersleeve, op cit., 73: Fouillee. op. 
cit., 124: "not universally intelligible"; ibid., 158 ff. Shelley's "Pro- 
metheus' is harder and more confused than that of Aeschylus, Brunetiere, 
Question du latin, 872: "Dante est trop subtil, Shakspeare est trop pro- 
fond, souvent aussi trop obscur; Goethe est trop savant," etc. So Gold- 
win Smith apud Taylor, 355. Illuminating in this connection is Profes- 
sor Canby's experience that the despised eighteenth-century Latinized Eng- 
lish classics are better for teaching than the Elizabethans or the Roman- 
tics. See Nation (August 4, 19 10), 99. 

s Clearly a disciple of Spencer, who after reading six books of the 
Iliad to "study superstitutions" "felt that I would rather give a large sum 
than read to the end." 



LATIN AND GREEK 47 

foundest study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, give 
it to him." The question is not whether an Englishman can, but 
whether the American student will, if the universities encourage 
the spirit of philistinism to create an atmosphere in which the 
study of Homer and Sophocles cannot live. 1 You may perhaps 
reduce classical studies to the position of Sanskrit and Zend and 
Hebrew. If you do, we shall faithfully hand on the torch of 
true scholarship to the audience fit and few that remains, and 
watch with amusement your attempts to teach the history, phil- 
ology, and higher criticism of English literature in the environ- 
ment that you have helped to create. 2 In short, as we said to 
our scientific colleagues, that the case of the classics is the case 
of serious discipline in education, so we warn the representatives 
of the modern humanities that the cause of all humane culture 
and historic criticism is bound up with the studies that were the 
first and remain the highest humanities. 

There is something to be said for the view that Tennyson, 
Milton, Goethe, Dante, and Racine are as obsolete as Virgil and 
Sophocles, and that the modern man's sole requirements are tech- 
nical experts cheaply hired, indexes to "hold the eel of science 
by the tail," the command of a "nervous," colloquial English 
style, a "typewriter girl" to correct his spelling, and a vaudeville 
to relax his mind. But there is very little to be said for the 
endeavor to rear a vast fabric of historic and literary scholarship 
in our universities without laying the indispensable foundations. 
Our culture might conceivably forego the firsthand knowledge of 
the supreme literary masterpieces of the world. We might sit 
down in stolid ignorance of the thousand years of uninterrupted 
civilization from Aeschylus to Claudian. We might renounce 
the historical study of the Middle Ages. But that would only 
be the beginning of our losses. The languages, the literatures, 
the philosophy, the whole higher spiritual tradition of the past 
four hundred years are unintelligible without this key. 3 It is 
impossible to explain this to those who have not already in some 
measure, however slight, verified it in their own experience. The 

1 Cf. Pop. Sci. Mo., XVII, 150: "If I had my way in the halls of 
education, I would not only dismiss Latin and Greek, but send off pack- 
ing with them the historical and comparative study of English itself." 

_ a Cf. the wail of Gayley, "The Collapse of Culture," in Idols of Edu- 
cation; Barrett Wendell's rueful confessions in The Mystery of Education. 

3 Cf. Brunetiere, "La question du latin," Revue des deux mondes, 
1885, VI, 862 ff. ; Clapp, op. cit., 97-98; Shorey, "Relations of Classical 
Literature to Other Branches of Learning," St. Louis Congress (1904) 
III, 377-85- 



48 SELECTED ARTICLES 

detail is too enormous. The books and essays to which I could 
refer you only skim the surface of the subject. 1 Anything that 
we could add here would be superfluous for those who know, 
and of those who will not believe or who cannot divine what 
we are hinting at we can only say with Doctor Johnson, "Sir, 
their ignorance is so great that I am afraid to show them the 
bottom of it." They are not initiated. They do not understand 
the lingua franca of European culture. Its vocabulary, its terms 
of art and criticism, its terminology of science and philosophy, 
charged with the cumulative associations of three thousand years, 
are for them the arbitrary counters of a mechanically memo- 
rized Volapiik. The inspirations, the standards of taste, the 
canons of criticism, the dialetic of ideas of the leaders of Euro- 
pean civilization for the past four centuries are non-existent for 
them. They cannot estimate the thought of their own or any 
other generation, because they do not know how to distinguish 
its peculiar quality from the common inheritance. Literature and 
history are to their apprehension all surface. The latent mean- 
ings, the second intentions, the allusions and the pre-suppositions 
escape their sense. They do not divine the existence of the 
deeper currents. 

So much for the ideal. But will the average graduate get 
all this? No, but he will get something, and the total culture 
of our country will get more. What will the average school 
boy get, or the average business man retain, of science? 

Once more, let us compare either ideals with ideals or actuali- 
ties with actualities. We are not saying that it is a great thing 
for our undergraduates to know a little classics. We are say- 
ing that it is a monstrous thing that they should not know any. 2 
It is deplorable to have been taught Latin badly, to have for- 
gotten how to read Virgil or Cicero with pleasure, and to visit 
your pique in denunciation of the only studies whose loss you 
seem to regret. But to have had no Latin at all practically means 
that you do not know the logic or understand the categories of 
general grammar and those forms of language v/hich are at the 

1 Cf. the bibliography in Shorey, supra; Zielinski, Our Debt to Anti- 
quity; Mahaffy, "What Have the Greeks Done for Civilization?"; Jebb, 
Essays and Addresses, 541-42, 560; Gildersleeve, op. cit., 23, 44, 60; 
Churton Collins, The Study of English Literature, (Macmillan, 189 1). 
Lowell, VI, 166: "Greek literature is also the most fruitful comment on 
our own"; 174: "the bees from all climes still fetch honey from the 
tiny garden-plot of Theocritus" (cf. Kerlin's Yale dissertation, "Theocritus 
in English Literature"). 

a Cf. Harris, "A Brief for Latin," Educational Review, XVII, 313- 



LATIN AND GREEK 49 

same time forms of thought; that you do not know and cannot 
safely learn from a lexicon the essential and root meanings of 
English vocables, and can therefore neither use them with a con- 
sciousness of their prime sensuous force 1 nor guard yourself 
against mixed metaphor; 2 that you are mystified by the varia- 
tions of meanings in like Latin derivations in Shakespeare, the 
Romance languages, and modern English ; that you have no his- 
toric feeling for the structure of the period which modern prose 
inherit from Isocrates through Cicero; that the difficulty of 
learning French or Italian is tripled for you, 3 and the possibil- 
ity of really understanding them forever precluded; 4 that you 
have no key to the terminology of science and philosophy, to law 
and international law Latin, and Latin maxims, 5 druggists' 
Latin, botanists' Latin, physicians' Latin; that you cannot even 
guess the meaning of the countless technical phrases, familiar 
quotations, proverbs, maxims, and compendious Latin formulae 
that are so essential a part of the dialect of educated men that 
the fiercest adversaries of the classics besprinkle their pages with 
misprints of them; 6 that you cannot study the early history 
of modern science and philosophy, or read their masterpieces in 
the original texts; 7 that Rome is as remote for you as China; 
that Virgil, Horace, and Cicero are mere names ; that French 
literature is a panorama without perspective, a series of unin- 
telligible allusions; 8 that travel in Italy loses half its charm; 

1 Cf. Pater, "On Style," Appreciations, 13, 17. It is hardly necessary 
to answer President Hall's cavil that an obtrusive consciousness and a 
pedantic use of etymology may sometimes be harmful. 

3 Gildersleeve, op. cit., 25. 

3 It is an exaggeration rather than a misrepresentation when Mill 
speaks (op cit., IV, 345) of "that ancient language .... the posses- 
sion of which makes it easier to learn four or five of the continental lan- 
guages than it is to learn one of them without it." On the greater ease 
with which classicists acquire the languages of India cf. Postgate, in 
Fortnightly, LXXII, 857. 

* "Le latin c'est la raison du frangais." — Vinet; cf. Gildersleeve, op. 
cit., 34. 

5 Foster, School Rev. (1909), 377; Scott, ibid., 498-501. 

6 See the works of President Stanley Hall and President Jordan, 
passim; Fouillee, op. cit., 126; Gildersleeve, on Bigelow, op. cit., 9. 

7 1 should like my aspirant to be able to read a scientific treatise in 
Latin, French, or German, because an enormous amount of anatomical 
knowledge is locked up in those languages." — Huxley, Technical Educa- 
tion, 409; cf. 187. Huxley himself was not happy until he got Greek. 
Half of Whewell's plea for the study of the history of science in The 
Culture Demanded by Modern Life is concerned with antiquity, and 
many of the authors mentioned in the other half wrote in Latin. 

8 Cf. Ren6 Doumic, "L'enseignement du latin et la litterature fran- 
chise," in Etudes sur la litt, franc. I; Br6al, "La tradition du latin." 
Revue des deux mondes, CV, 551 ff. 



50 SELECTED ARTICLES 

that you cannot decipher an inscription on the Appian way, in 
the Catacombs, in Westminster Abbey, on Boston Common, or 
on the terrace of Quebec, or verify a quotation from St. Augus- 
tine, the Vulgate, the Mass, Bacon, Descartes, Grotius' On War 
and Peace, or Spinoza's Ethics, to say nothing of consulting the 
older documents of English law and institutions, the sources of 
the civil law, on which the laws of Europe and Louisiana are 
based, the Monument a Rerum Germanicarum, or Migne's patro- 
logia, or reading a bull of the Pope or a telegram of the German 
emperor; that, not to go back to Milton and the Elizabethans, 
who are unintelligible without Latin, you cannot make out the 
texts from which Addison's Spectator discourses, you do not 
know half the time what Johnson and Boswell are talking about; 
that Pope and all of the characteristic writers of the so-called 
Golden Age are sealed books to you ; that you are ill at ease and 
feel yourself an outsider in reading the correspondence of 
Tennyson and Fitzgerald, or that of almost any educated Eng- 
lishman of the nineteenth century, and even in reading Thack- 
eray's novels; that half of Charles Lamb's puns lose their point; 
and that when Punch alludes to the pathetic scene in which 
Colonel Newcome cries "absit omen !" for the last time, you 
don't see the joke. 

If our scientific colleagues, forgetting outworn polemics and 
on sober second thought, assure us that the jealous requirements 
of their stern mistress demand this sacrifice, we can make no 
reply. Let them deal with purely scientific education and with 
its symbol, the B.S. degree, in their discretion. But let us hear 
no more of the farce of a literary, a philosophical, or a historical 
education that omits even the elements of the languages and 
literatures on which all literary and historical studies depend for 
men of European descent. Our acquiescence in such a "collapse 
of culture" is due to our supine and fatalistic acceptance of the 
disgracefully low standards which the abuse of the elective sys- 
tem and the premature distraction of the socially precocious and 
intellectually retarded American boy by the dissipations of mod- 
ern life and society have imposed upon us. Mill may have 
overestimated the powers of acquisition of the human mind, but 
he was far nearer right than we are, who bestow degrees on 
students who have merely deigned to listen to a few chatty lec- 
tures on "anything and everything connected with modern life." 

The talk of ten or twelve years' ineffectual study of Latin 



LATIN AND GREEK 51 

and Greek is nonsense or misrepresentation. It is an indictment 
of human nature and bad teaching, not specially of classical 
studies. Undisciplined students will doubtless dawdle over any- 
thing, from French to mathematics, so long as teachers and 
parents permit it. But in a serious school one-fourth of the 
student's time for four or five years is enough for the acquisi- 
tion, together with the power to read Cicero and Virgil with 
pleasure, of more English than classmates who omit Latin will 
probably learn. It is not a formidable undertaking, except for 
students whose attention is too dissipated and whose minds are 
too flabby to master anything that must be remembered beyond 
the close of the current term. There is and always will be ample 
room for a reasonable amount of Latin in any rational scheme 
of studies that extends four or more years beyond the graded 
schools. 

Latin is a necessity in anything but an elementary or purely 
technical education. Greek is not in this sense a necessity. 1 
Neither is it a scholastic specialty. It is the first of luxuries, a 
luxury which no one proposes to prescribe for all collegians, but 
which ought to be enjoyed by an increasing proportion of those 
who are now frightened away from it by exaggeration of its 
difficulty or by utilitarian objections that apply with equal force 
to the inferior substitutes which partisan advisers recommend in 
its place. The value and the chaim of even a little knowledge of 
Greek has often been explained, 2 and has been repeatedly dem- 
onstrated in the courses in beginning Greek offered by American 
colleges! in the past decade. Students of good but not extraordi- 
nary ability have, while keeping up their other work, read six 
books of the Anabasis in the first year of study; have completed 
in three years the A.B. requirements of the University of Chi- 
cago, including eight books of the Odyssey, two Greek trage- 
dies, and Plato's Apology and Crito, and have in the fourth year 
of study read the entire Republic of Plato with intelligence and 

1 1 cannot pause to discuss the misconception of those representatives 
of science who argue, not quite seriously perhaps, that if only one ancient 
language is to be studied it should be Greek. This might be true for Mars 
or China. It is plainly not true for that Europe which was evolved from 
the Roman empire, and which until the second or German Renaissance 
received the inspiration of Greece mainly through Latin literature. 

2 See Jebb, op. tit., 575-80; "A Popular Study of Greek." President 
Mackenzie, in School Rev. (1908), 376, adds the weighty suggestion that 
those "who do not possess these weapons of a full Christian culture" 
will tend to read only what is easy and avoid scholarly works that con- 
tain even a few Greek words or Latin quotations. 



52 SELECTED ARTICLES 

delight. These facts and similar results obtained in other uni- 
versities are verifiable by any unprejudiced inquirer, and they 
make it difficult to characterize in parliamentary language the 
persistent misrepresentation that eight or ten or twelve years' 
exclusive study of the classics yields no results comparable to 
those achieved by the normal student in other studies. In the 
light of this experience no fair-minded dean or judicious adviser 
of students already biased by unthinking popular prejudice can 
refuse in Lowell's words to "give the horse a chance at the 
ancient springs" before concluding that he will not drink. 1 



THE WORTH OF ANCIENT LITERATURE TO 
THE MODERN WORLD 2 

That the study of the Greek and Latin languages should be 
now disparaged need cause no surprise, for a reaction against 
the undue predominance they enjoyed in education a century 
ago was long overdue. What is remarkable is that the disposi- 
tion to disparage them and exalt another class of subjects has 
laid hold of certain sections of the population which were not 
wont to interest themselves in educational matters, but used to 
take submissively whatever instruction was given them. It is a 
remarkable fact; but though remarkable, it is not hard to ex- 
plain. The most striking feature in the economic changes of the 
last eighty years has been the immense development of industrial 
production by the application thereto of discoveries in the sphere 
of natural science. Employment has been provided for an 
enormous number of workers, and enormous fortunes have been 
accumulated by those employers who had the foresight or the 
luck to embark capital in the new forms of manufacture. Thus 
there has been created in the popular mind an association, now 
pretty deeply rooted, between the knowledge of applied science 
and material prosperity. It is this association of ideas, rather 
than any pride in the achievements of the human intellect by the 
unveiling of the secrets of Nature and the setting of her forces 
at work in the service of man, that has made a knowledge of 

1 Latest Lit. Essays, I, 53. 

2 This article, by Hon. James Bryce, author of The American Com- 
monwealth and for several years the British Ambassador at Washington, 
originally appeared in the Fortnightly Review. 107:551-66. April 19 17. 
and was reprinted in the Living Age. 293:522-34. June 1917, and by the 
General Education Board as Occasional Paper No. 6. 



' LATIN AND GREEK 53 

physical science seem so supremely important to large classes 
that never before thought about education or tried to estimate 
the respective value of the various studies needed to train the 
intelligence and form the character. 

To put the point in the crudest way, the average man sees, 
or thinks he sees, that the diffusion of a knowledge of languages, 
literature, and history does not seem to promise an increase of 
riches either to the nation or to the persons who possess that 
knowledge, while he does see, or thinks he sees, that from a 
knowledge of mechanics or chemistry or electricity such an in- 
crease may be expected both to the community and to the per- 
sons engaged in the industries dependent on those sciences. This 
average man accordingly concludes that the former or the literary 
kinds of knowledge have, both for the individual and for the 
community, far less value than have the latter, i.e., the scientific. 

Two other arguments have weight with persons more reflec- 
tive than those whose mental attitude I have been describing ; and 
their force must be admitted. Languages — not merely the an- 
cient languages, but languages in general — have too often been 
badly taught, and the learning of them has therefore been found 
repulsive by many pupils. The results have accordingly been dis- 
appointing, and out of proportion to the time and labour spent. 
Comparatively few of those who have given from six to eight 
years of their boyhood mainly to the study of Greek and Latin 
retain a knowledge of either language sufficient to afford either 
use or pleasure to them through the rest of life. Of the whole - 
number of those who yearly graduate at Oxford or at Cam- 
bridge, I doubt if a thirty years of age 15 per cent could read 
at sight an easy piece of Latin, or 5 per cent an easy piece of 
Greek. As this seems an obvious sort of test of the effect of the 
teaching, people come to the conclusion that the time spent on 
Greek and Latin was wasted. 

Let us frankly admit these facts. Let us recognize that the 
despotism of a purely grammatical study of the ancient lan- 
guages and authors needed to be overthrown. Let us also dis- 
card some weak arguments our predecessors have used, such as 
that no one can write a good English style without knowing 
Latin. There are too many cases to the contrary. Nothing is 
gained by trying to defend an untenable position. We must re- 
tire to the stronger lines of defence and entrench ourselves there. 
You will also agree that the time has come when every one 



54 SELECTED ARTICLES 

should approach the subject not as the advocate of a cause but 
in an impartial spirit. We must consider education as a whole, 
rather than as a crowd of diverse subjects with competing claims. 
What is the chief aim of education? What sorts of capacities 
and of attainments go to make a truly educated man, with keen 
and flexible faculties, ample store* of knowledge, and the power 
of drawing pleasure from the exercise of his faculties in turn- 
ing to account the knowledge he has accumulated? How should 
the mental training fitted to produce such capacities begin? 

First of all by teaching him how to observe and by making 
him enjoy the habit of observation. The attention of the child 
should from the earliest years be directed to external nature. 
His observation should be alert, and it should be exact. 

Along with this he should learn how to use language, to 
know the precise differences between the meanings of various 
words apparently similar, to be able to convey accurately what 
he wishes to say. This goes with the habit of observation, which 
can be made exact only by the use in description of exact terms. 
In training the child to observe constantly and accurately and 
to use language precisely, two things are being given which are 
the foundation of mental vigour — curiosity, i.e., the desire to 
know — and the habit of thinking. And in knowing how to use 
words one begins to learn — it is among the most important parts 
of knowledge — how to be the master and not the slave of words. 
The difference between the dull child and the intelligent child 
appears from very early years in the power of seeing and the 
power of describing: and that which at twelve years of age seems 
to be dullness is often due merely to neglect. The child has not 
been encouraged to observe or to describe or to reflect. 

Once the Love of Knowledge and the enjoyment in exercis- 
ing the mind have been formed, the first and most critical stage 
in education has been successfully passed. What remains is to 
supply the mind with knowledge, while further developing the 
desire to acquire more knowledge. And here the question arises : 
What sort of knowledge? The field is infinite, and it expands 
daily. How is a selection to be made? 

One may distipguish broadly between two classes of knowl- 
edge, that of the world of nature and that of the world of man, 
i.e., between external objects, inanimate and animate, and all 
the products of human thought, such as forms of speech, liter- 
ature, all that belongs to the sphere of abstract ideas, and the 



LATIN AND GREEK 55 

record of what men have done or said. The former of these 
constitutes what we call the domain of physical science; the 
latter, the domain of the so-called Humanities. Every one in 
whom the passion of curiosity has been duly developed will find 
in either far more things he desires to know than he will ever 
be able to know, and that which may seem the saddest but is 
really the best of it is that the longer he lives, the more will he 
desire to go on learning. 

How, then, is the time available for education to be alloted 
between these two great departments? Setting aside the cases 
of those very few persons who show an altogether exceptional 
gift for scientific discovery, mathematical or physical, on the one 
hand, or for literary creation on the other, and passing by the 
question of the time when special training for a particular call- 
ing should begin, let us think of education as a preparation for 
life as a whole, so that it may fit men to draw from life the most 
it can give for use and for enjoyment. 

The more that can be learnt in both of these great depart- 
ments, the realm of external nature and the realm of man, so 
much the better. Plenty of knowledge in both is needed to pro- 
duce a capable and highly finished mind. Those who have at- 
tained eminence in either have usually been, and are to-day, the 
first to recognize the value of the other, because they have come 
to know how full of resource and delight all true knowledge is. 
There are none of us who are here today as students of lan- 
guage and history that would not gladly be far more at home 
than he is in the sciences of Nature 

To have acquired even an elementary knowledge of such 
branches of natural history as, for instance, geology or botany, 
not only stimulates the powers of observation and imagination, 
but adds immensely to the interest and the value of travel and 
enlarges the historian's field of reflection. So, too, we all feel 
the fascination of those researches into the constitution of the 
material universe which astronomy and stellar chemistry are 
prosecuting within the region of the infinitely vast, while they 
are being also prosecuted on our own planet in the region of the 
infinitely minute. No man can in our days be deemed educated 
who has not some knowledge of the relation of the sciences to 
one another, and a just conception of the methods by which they 
respectively advance. Those of us who apply criticism to the 
study of ancient texts or controverted historical documents 



56 SELECTED ARTICLES 

profit from whatever we know about the means whereby truth 
is pursued in the realm of Nature. In these and in many other 
ways we gladly own ourselves the debtors of our scientific 
brethern, and disclaim any intention to disparage either the edu- 
cational value or the intellectual pleasure to be derived from 
their pursuits. Between them and us there is, I hope, no conflict, 
no controversy. The conflict is not between Letters and Science, 
but between a large and philosophical conception of the aims of 
education and that material, narrow, or even vulgar view which 
looks only to immediate practical results and confounds pecun- 
iary with educational values. 

We have to remember that for a nation even commercial suc- 
cess and the wealth it brings are, like everything else in the long 
run, the result of Thought and Will. It is by these two, Thought 
and Will, that nations, like individuals, are great. We in Eng- 
land are accused, as a nation and as individuals, of being de- 
ficient in knowledge and in the passion for knowledge. There 
may be some other nation that surpasses us in the knowledge it 
has accumulated and in the industry with which it adds to the 
stock of its knowledge. But such a nation might show, both in 
literature and in action, that it does not always know how to use 
its knowledge. It might think hard, harder perhaps than we do, 
but its thought might want that quality which gives the power 
of using knowledge aright. Possessing knowledge, it might lack 
imagination and insight and sympathy, and it might therefore be 
in danger of seeing and judging falsely and of erring fatally. 
It would then be in worse plight than we; for these faults lie 
deep down, whereas ours can be more easily corrected. We can 
set ourselves to gain more knowledge, to set more store by 
knowledge, to apply our minds more strenuously to the prob- 
lems before us. The time has ccme to do these things, and to do 
them promptly. But the power of seeing truly, by the help of 
imagination and sympathy, and the power of thinking justly, we 
may fairly claim to have as a nation generally displayed. Both 
are evident in our history, both are visible in our best men of sci- 
ence and learning, and in our greatest creative minds. 

This is not, I hope, a digression, for what I desire to empha- 
size is the need in education of all that makes for width of 
knowledge and for breadth and insight and balanee in thinking 
power. The best that education can do for a nation is to de- 
velop and strengthen the faculty of thinking intensely and 



LATIN AND GREEK 57 

soundly, and to extend from the few to the many the delights 
which thought and knowledge give, saving the people from de- 
generating into base and corrupting pleasures by teaching them 
to enjoy those which are high and pure. 

Now we may ask: What place in education is due to literary 
and historical studies in respect of the service they render to us 
for practical life, for mental stimulus and training, and for en- 
joyment? 

These studies cover and bear upon the whole of human life. 
They are helpful for many practical avocations, indeed in a cer- 
tain sense for all avocations, because in all we have to deal with 
other men; and whatever helps us to understand men and how 
to handle them is profitable for practical use. We all of us set 
out in life to convince, or at least to persuade (or some perhaps 
to delude) other men, and none of us can tell that he may not 
be called upon to lead or guide his fellows. 

Those students also who explore organic tissues or experi- 
ment upon ions and electrons have to describe in words and per- 
suade with words. For dealing with men in the various relations 
of life, the knowledge of tissues and electrons does not help. 
The knowledge of human nature does help, and to that knowl- 
edge letters and history contribute. The whole world of emo- 
tion — friendship, love, all the sources of enjoyment except those 
which spring from the intellectual achievements of discovery- 
belong to the human field, even when drawn from the love of 
nature. To understand sines and logarithms, to know how cells 
unite into tissues, and of what gaseous elements, in what propor- 
tion, atoms are combined to form water — all these things are the 
foundations of branches of science, each of which has the utmost 
practical value. But. they need to be known by those only who 
are engaged in promoting those sciences by research or in deal- 
ing practically with their applications. One can buy and use 
common salt without calling it chloride of sodium. A black- 
berry gathered on a hedge tastes no better to the man who 
knows that it belongs to the extremely perplexing genus Rubus 
and is a sister species to the raspberry and the cloudberry, 
and has scarcely even a nodding acquaintance with the bilberry 
and the bearberry. None of these things, interesting as they 
are to the student, touches human life and feeling. Pericles and 
Julius Caesar would have been no fitter for the work they had to 
do if they had been physiologists or chemists. No one at a su- 



58 SELECTED ARTICLES 

preme crisis in his life can nerve himself to action, or comfort 
himself under a stroke of fate, by reflecting that the angles at 
the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. It is to poetry and 
philosophy, and to the examples of conduct history supplies, that 
we must go for stimulus or consolation. How thin and pale 
would life be without the record of the thoughts and deeds of 
those who have gone before us ! The pleasures of scientific dis- 
covery are intense, but they are reserved for the few; the plea- 
sures which letters and history bestow with a lavish hand are 
accessible to us all. 

These considerations are obvious enough, but they are so 
often overlooked that it is permissible to refer to them when 
hasty voices are heard calling upon us to transform our educa- 
tion by overthrowing letters and arts and history in order to 
make way for hydrocarbons and the anatomy of the Cephalopoda. 
The substitution in our secondary schools of the often unintelli- 
gent and mechanically taught study of details in such subjects 
has already gone far, perhaps too far for the mental width and 
flexibility of the next generation. 

If, then, we conclude that the human subjects are an essential 
part, and for most persons the most essential part, of education, 
what place among these subjects is to be assigned to the study of 
the ancient classics, or, as I should prefer to say, to the study of 
the ancient world? This question is usually discussed as if the 
forms of speech only were concerned. People complain that too 
much is made of the languages, and discredit their study, calling 
them "dead languages," and asking of what use can be the gram- 
mar and vocabulary of a tongue no longer spoken among men. 

But what we are really thinking of when we talk of the an- 
cient classics is something far above grammar and the study of 
words, far above even inquiries so illuminative as those which 
belong to Comparative Philology. It is the ancient world as a 
whole ; not the languages merely, but the writings ; not their 
texts and style merely, but all that the books contain or suggest. 

This mention of the books, however, raises a preliminary 
question which needs a short consideration. Is it necessary to 
learn Greek and Latin in order to appreciate the ancient authors 
and profit by their writings? What is the value of translations? 
Can they give us, if not all that the originals give, yet so large a 
part as to make the superior results attainable from the originals 
not worth the time and trouble spent in learning the languages? 



LATIN AND GREEK 59 

Much of the charm of style must, of course, be lost. But is that 
charm so great as to warrant the expenditure of half or more 
out of three or four years of a boy's life? 

This question is entangled with another, viz., that of the 
value, as a training in thought and in the power of expression, 
which the mastery of another language than one's own supplies. 
I will not, however, stop to discuss this point, content to remark 
that all experienced teachers recognize the value referred to, and 
hold it to be greater when the other language mastered is an in- 
flected language with a structure and syntax unlike those of mod- 
ern forms of speech, such as Latin and Greek, and such as Ice- 
landic, together with some of the Slavonic languages, almost 
alone among modern civilized languages, possess. Let us re- 
turn to the question of the worth of translations. It is a difficult 
question, because neither those who know the originals nor those 
who do not are perfectly qualified judges. The former, when 
they read their favourite author in a translation, miss so much 
of the old charm that they may underestimate its worth to the 
English reader. The latter, knowing the translation only, can- 
not tell how much better the original may be. It is those who, 
having read an author in a translation, afterwards learn Greek 
(or Latin) and read him in the original, that are perhaps best 
entitled to offer a sound opinion. 

Prose writers, of course, suffer least by being translated. 
Polybius and Procopius, Quintus Curtius, and Ammianus Mar- 
cellinus can give us their facts, Epictetus and the Emperor Mar- 
cus their precepts and reflections, almost as well in our tongue as 
in their own. Most of us find the New Testament more impres- 
sive in English, which was at its best in the early seventeenth 
century, than in Hellenistic Greek, which had declined so far in 
the first and second centuries as to be distasteful to a modern 
reader who is familiar with the Attic writers. The associations 
of childhood have also had their influence in making us feel the 
solemnity and dignity of the English version. Even among 
writers of prose there are some whose full grace or force can- 
not be conveyed by the best translation. Plato and Tacitus are 
examples, and so, among moderns, is Cervantes, some of whose 
delicate humour evaporates (so to speak) when the ironical 
stateliness of his Castilian has to be rendered in another tongue. 
The poets, of course, suffer far more, but in very unequal degree. 
Lucan or Claudian, not to speak of Apollonius Khodius, might 



60 * SELECTED ARTICLES 

be well rendered by any master of poetical rhetoric such as Dry- 
den or Byron. But the earlier bards, and especially Pindar and 
Virgil, Sophocles, and Theocritus, are untranslatable. If one 
wants to realize how great can be the loss, think of the version 
Catullus produced of Sappho's ode that begins Qaiverai fwl 
xclvo lab Oeoioiv. The translator is a great poet and he uses the 
same metre, but how low in the Latin version do the fire and 
passion of the original burn ! In the greatest of the ancients the 
sense is so inwoven with the words and the metre with both that 
with the two last elements changed the charm vanishes. What- 
ever admiration we may give to some of the verse renderings of 
Homer and to some of those admirable prose renderings which 
our own time and country have produced, one has to say of them 
all much what Bentley said to Pope, "A very pretty poem, but 
you must not call it Homer." The want, in English, of any 
metre like the Greek hexameter is alone fatal. 

If we are asked to formulate a conclusion on this matter, 
shall we not say that whoever wishes to draw from the great 
ancients the best they have to give must begin by acquiring a 
working acquaintance with, though not necessarily a complete 
grammatical mastery of, the languages in which they wrote? 
Those who cannot find time to do this will have recourse to 
such translations, now readily obtainable, as convey accurately 
the substance of the classical writers. Style and the more subtle 
refinements of expression will be lost, but the facts, and great 
part of the thoughts, will remain. The facts and the thoughts 
are well worth having. But that real value and that full delight 
which, as I shall try to indicate, the best ancient authors can be 
made to yield to us can be gained only by reading them in the 
very words they used. 

This would be the place for an examination of the claims of 
modern languages. Both the practical utility of these languages, 
and especially of Spanish, hitherto far too much neglected, and 
their value as gateways to noble literatures, are too plain to need 
discussion. The question for us here to-day is this : Are these 
values such as to enable us to dispense with the study of the 
ancient world? I venture to believe that they do not, and shall 
try in the concluding part of this address to show why that 
study is still an essential part of a complete education. 

But before entering on the claims of the classics, a word must 



LATIN AND GREEK. 61 

be said on a practical aspect of the matter as it affects the cur- 
ricula of schools and universities. I do not contend that the 
study of the ancients is to be imposed on all, or even on the 
bulk, of those who remain at school till eighteen, or on most of 
those who enter a university. It is generally admitted that at 
the universities the present system cannot be maintained. Even 
of those who enter Oxford or Cambridge, many have not the 
capacity or the taste to make it worth while for them to devote 
much time there to Greek and Latin. The real practical prob- 
lem for all our universities is this : How are we to find means 
by which the study, while dropped for those who will never 
make much of it, may be retained, and forever securely main- 
tained, for that percentage of our youth, be it 20 or 30 per cent 
or be it more, who will draw sufficient mental nourishment and 
stimulus from the study to make it an effective factor in their 
intellectual growth and an unceasing spring of enjoyment 
through the rest of life? This part of our youth has an im- 
portance for the nation not to be measured by its numbers. It 
is on the best minds that the strength of a nation depends, and 
more than half of these will find their proper province in letters 
and history. It is by the best minds that nations win and retain 
leadership. No pains can be too great that are spent on 
developing such minds to the finest point of efficiency. 

We shall effect a saving if we drop that study of the ancient 
languages in the case of those who, after a trial, show no 
aptitude for them. But means must be devised whereby that 
study shall, while made more profitable through better methods, 
be placed in a position of such honour and importance as will 
secure its being prosecuted by those who are capable of receiving 
from it the benefits it is fitted to confer. 

For the schools the problem is how to discover among the 
boys and girls those who have the kind of gift which makes it 
worth while to take them out of the mass and give them due 
facilities for pursuing these studies at the higher secondary 
schools, so that they may proceed thence to the universities 
and further prosecute them there. Many of you, as teachers, 
know better than I how this problem may be solved. Solved it 
must be, if the whole community is not to lose the benefit of 
our system of graded schools. 

Returning to the question of what benefits we receive from 



62 SELECTED ARTICLES 

the study of the ancient world as it speaks to as through its 
great writers, I will venture to classify those benefits under four 
heads. 

I. Greece and Rome are the well-springs of the intellectual 
life of all civilized modern peoples. From then descent to us 
poetry and philosophy, oratory, and history, sculpture and 
architecture, even (through East Roman or so-called "Byzantine" 
patterns) painting. Geometry, and the rudiments of the sciences 
of observation, grammar, logic, politics, law, almost everything 
in the sphere of the humanistic subjects, except religion and 
poetry inspired by religion, are part of their heritage. One 
cannot explore the first beginnings of any of these sciences and 
arts without tracing it back either to a Greek or to a Roman 
source. All the forms poetical literature has taken, the epic, the 
lyric, the dramatic, the pastoral, the didactic, the satiric, the 
epigrammatic, were of their inventing; and in all they have 
produced examples of excellence scarcely ever surpassed, and fit 
to be still admired and followed by whoever seeks. 

To the ancients, and especially to the poets, artists, and philos- 
ophers, every mediaeval writer and thinker owed all he knew, 
and from their lamps kindled his own. We moderns have 
received the teaching and the stimulus more largely in an indirect 
way through our mediaeval and older modern predecessors, but 
the ultimate source is the same. Whoever will understand the 
forms which literature took when thought and feeling first began 
to enjoy their own expression with force and grace, appreciating 
the beauty and the music words may have, will recur to the 
poetry of the Greeks as that in which this phenomenon — the 
truest harbinger of civilisation — dawned upon mankind. The 
influences of the epic in the Homeric age, of the lyric in the 
great days that begin from Archilochus, of the drama from 
Aeschylus onwards — these are still living influences, this is a 
fountain that flows to-day for those who will draw near to 
quaff its crystal waters. In some instances the theme itself has 
survived, taking new shapes in the succession of the ages. One 
of such instances may be worth citing. The noblest part of the 
greatest poem of the Roman world is the sixth book of the 
Aeneid which describes the descent of the Trojan hero to the 
nether world. It was directly suggested to Virgil by the eleventh 
book of the Odyssey, called by the Greeks the Nekuia, in which 
Odysseus seeks out the long-dead prophet Tiresias to learn from 



LATIN AND GREEK 63 

him how he shall contrive his return to his home in Ithaca, 
The noblest poem of the Middle Ages, one of the highest efforts 
of human genius, is that which Dante describes his own journey 
down through Hell and up through Purgatory and Paradise till 
at last he approaches the region where the direct vision of God 
is vouchsafed to the ever blessed saints. The idea and many of 
the details of the Divina Commedia were suggested to Dante 
by the sixth Aeneid. 1 The Florentine poet who addresses Virgil 
as his father is thus himself the grandchild of Homer, though 
no line of Greek was ever read by him. In each of these three 
Nekuiai the motive and occasion for the journey is the same. 
Something is to be learnt in the world of spirits which the 
world of the living cannot give. In the first it is to be learnt 
by a single hero for his own personal ends. In the second Aeneas 
is the representative of the coming Rome, its achievements and 
its spirit. In the third the lesson is to be taught to the human 
soul, and the message is one to all mankind. The scene widens 
at each stage, and the vision expands. The historical import of 
the second vision passes under the light of a new religion into 
a revelation of the meaning and purpose of the universe. How 
typical is each of its own time and of the upward march of 
human imagination! Odysseus crosses the deep stream of 
gently-flowing Ocean past a Kimmerian land, always shadowed 
by clouds and mists, to the dwelling of the dead, and finds their 
pale ghosts, unsubstantial images of their former selves, knowing 
nothing of the Present, but with the useless gift of foresight, 
saddened by the recollection of the life they had once in the 
upper air — a hopeless sadness that would be intense were their 
feeble souls capable of anything intense. The weird mystery of 
this home of the departed is heightened by the vagueness with 
which everything is told. That which is real is the dimness, 
the atmosphere of gloom, a darkness visible which enshrouds 
the dwellers and their dwelling-place. 

The Hades of Virgil is more varied and more majestic. In 
it the monstrous figures of Hellenic mythology are mingled with 
personifications of human passions. We find ourselves in a 

1 It is perhaps not too fanciful to suggest that the part played by Circe 
in the Odyssey suggests that played by the Cumaean Sibyl in the Aeneid 
and the latter the appearance of his Guide to Dante. So the line of hapless 
heroines whom Odysseus sees (Book xi. 11. 225-332) reappears with vari- 
ations in Aeneid vi. 44s, introducing the touching episode of the address 
of Aeneas to Dido; and among the sorrowful figures whom Dante meets 
none are touched more tenderly than Francesca in the Inferno and la 
Pia in the Purgatorio. 



64 SELECTED ARTICLES 

world created by philosophic thought, far removed from the 
childlike simplicity of the Odyssey. There are Elysian fields of 
peace, with a sun and stars of their own, yet melancholy broods 
over the scene, the soft melancholy of a late summer evening, 
when colours are fading from the landscape. 

In the Divine Comedy we return to something between the 
primitive realism of early Greece and the allegorical philosophy 
of Virgil. Dante is quite as realistic as Homer, but far more 
vivid; he is as solemn as Vigil, but more sublime. The unseen 
world becomes as actual as the world above. Everything stands 
out sharp and clear. The Spirits are keenly interested in the 
Past and the Future, though knowing nothing (just as in 
Homer) of the Present. Ghosts though they may be, they are 
instinct with life and passion, till a region is reached in highest 
heaven of which neither Homer nor Virgil ever dreamed, 
because its glory and its joys transcend all human experience. 
Three phases of thought and emotion, three views of life and 
what is beyond life, of the Universe and the laws and powers 
that rule it, find their most concentrated poetical expression in 
these three visions of that Place of Spirits, which has always 
been present to the thoughts of mankind as the undiscovered 
background to their little life beneath the sun. 

II. Secondly. Ancient classical literature is the common 
possession, and, with the exception of the Bible and a very few 
mediaeval writings, the only common possession, of all civilised 
peoples. Every well-educated man in every educated country 
is expected to have some knowledge of it, to have read the 
greatest books, to remember the leading characters, to have 
imbibed the fundamental ideas. It is the one ground on which 
they all meet. It is therefore a living tie between the great 
modern nations. However little they may know of one another's 
literature, they find this field equally open to them all, and 
equally familiar. Down till the seventeenth century the learned 
all over Europe used Latin as their means of communication 
and the vehicle of expression for their more serious work in 
prose. Ever since the Renaissance gave Greek literature back 
to Western and Central Europe and turned the critical labours 
of scholars upon ancient writings, scholars in all countries have 
vied with one another in the purifying of the texts and elucida- 
tion of the meaning of those writings ; and this work has given 
occasion for constant intercourse by visits and correspondence 



LATIN AND GREEK 65 

between the learned men of England, Scotland, France, Ger- 
many, Italy, Holland, Denmark. Thus was maintained, even 
after the great ecclesiastical schism of the sixteenth century, 
the notion of an international polity of thought, a Republic of 
Letters. The, sense that all were working together for a com- 
mon purpose has been down to our own days, despite interna- 
tional jealousies (now, alas! more bitter than ever before), a 
bond of sympathy and union. 

III. Thirdly. Ancient History is the key to all history, not 
to political history only, but to the record also of the changing 
thoughts and beliefs of races and peoples. Before the sixth 
century b. c. we have only patriarchal or military monarchies. 
It is with the Greek cities that political institutions begin, that 
different forms of government take shape, that the conception 
of responsible citizenship strikes root, that both ideas and 
institutions germinate and blossom and ripen and decay, the 
institutions overthrown by intestine seditions, and finally by 
external power, the ideas unable to maintain themselves against 
material forces, and at last dying out because the very discussion 
of them, much less their realization, seemed hopeless, and it only 
remained to turn to metaphysical speculation and ethical dis- 
course. But the ideas and the practice, during the too brief 
centuries of freedom, had found their record in histories and 
speeches and treaties. These ideas bided their time. These 
give enlightenment to-day, for though environments change, 
human nature persists. That which makes Greek history so 
specially instructive and gives it a peculiar charm is that it sets 
before us a host of striking characters in the fields of thought 
and imaginative creation as well as in the field of political strife, 
the abstract and the concrete always in the closest touch with 
one another. The poets and the philosophers are, so to speak, 
a sort of chorus to the action carried forward on the stage by 
soldiers, statesmen, and orators. In no other history is the 
contact and interworking of all these types and forces made 
so manifest. We see and understand each through the other, 
and obtain a perfect picture of the whole. 

So also are the annals of the Imperial City a key to a history, 
but in a different sense. The tale of the doings of the Roman 
people is less rich in ideas, but it is of even higher import in its 
influence on all that came after it. As Thought and Imagination 
are the notes of the Hellenic mind, so Will and Force are the 



66 SELECTED ARTICLES 

notes of the Roman — Force with the conceptions of Order, Law, 
and System. It has a more persistent and insistent volition, a 
greater gift for organization. Roman institutions are almost as 
fertile by their example as the Greek mind was by its ideas. 
Complicated and cumbrous as was the constitution of the Roman 
Republic, we see in it almost as wonderful a product of fresh 
contrivances devised from one age to another to meet fresh 
exigencies as in the English Constitution itself, and it deserves 
a scarcely less attentive study. But high as is this permanent 
value for the student of politics, still higher is its importance 
as the starting-point for the history of the European nations, 
some of whom it had ruled, all of whom it taught. It created 
a body of law and schemes of provincial and municipal adminis- 
tration, which, modified as all these have been by mediaeval 
feudalism, became the basis of the governmental systems of 
modern States. Still more distinctly was the Roman Empire 
in West and East the foundation on which the vast fabric of 
church government has been raised. As the religious beliefs 
and superstitions and usages of the Romano-Hellenic world 
affected early Christianity, so did the organization of the Empire 
serve as a model for the organization of the Christian Church. 
Without a knowledge of these things it is impossible to under- 
stand ecclesiastical history. The riddles of the Middle Ages — 
and they are many — would be insoluble without a reference back 
to what went before ; nor need I remind you how much of the 
Middle Ages has lasted down into our own days, nor how in the 
fifteenth century the long-silent voices of ancient Greece awoke 
to vivify and refine the thought and the imagination of Europe. 
IV. Lastly, the ancient writers set before us a world super- 
ficially most unlike our own. All the appliances, all the para- 
phernalia of civilisation were different. Most of those appliances 
were indeed wanting. The Athenians in their brightest days had 
few luxuries and not many comforts. They knew scarcely 
anything about the forces of Nature, and still less did they 
know how to turn them to the service of man. Their world was 
small. The chariot of their sun took less than five hours to 
traverse the space between the Euphrates and the Pillars of 
Hercules, and many parts within that space were unknown to 
them. Civilised indeed they were, but theirs was a civilisation 
which consisted not in things material, but in art and the love 
of beauty, in poetry and the love of poetry, in music and a 



LATIN AND GREEK 67 

sensibility to music, in a profusion of intelligence active, versatile, 
refined, expressing its thoughts through wonderfully rich and 
flexible forms of speech. There was little wealth and little 
poverty, some inequality in rank but not much in social relations : 
women were secluded, slavery was the basis of industry. Yet 
it was a complete and perfect world, perfect in almost every- 
thing except religion and those new virtues, as one may call 
them, which the Gospel has brought in its train. Human nature 
was, in essentials, what it is now. But it was a youthful world, 
and human nature appeared in its simplest guise. Nature was 
all alive to it. It looked out on everything around it with the 
fresh curiosity of wide-open youthful eyes. As the Egyptian 
priest said to Solon, with a deeper wisdom than perhaps he 
knew, the Greeks were children. Like children, they saw things 
together which moderns have learnt to distinguish and to keep 
apart. Their speculations on ethics and politics were blent with 
guesses at the phenomena of external nature, religion was blent 
with mythology, poetry with history, gods with men. It is 
good for us, in the midst of our complex and artificial civilisa- 
tion, good for us in whom the sense of beauty is less spontaneous, 
whose creative power is clogged by a weariness of the past, and 
who are haunted by doubts of all that cannot be established by 
the methods of science, to turn back to these simpler days, and 
see things again in their simplicity, as the men of Athens saw 
them in the clear light of a Mediterranean dawn. The dawn 
is the loveliest moment of the day, and there are truths best 
seen in the innocent freshness of morning. 

The poets of the early world did not need to strain after 
effect. They spoke with that directness which makes words go, 
like arrows, straight to their mark. Strength came to them 
without effort. As no prose narratives have ever surpassed the 
description in the seventh book of Thucydides of the Athenian 
army's retreat from Syracuse, so no narratives, in prose or 
poetry, except perhaps some few in the earlier books of the Old 
Testament and in the Icelandic sagas, have ever equalled the 
telling of the tales contained in the Odyssey, such as that in 
which Eumaeus recounts to Odysseus how he was brought in 
childhood from his native home to Ithaca. Even among the later 
classic poets this gift of directness remains. It is one of the 
glories of Lucretius. What can be more impressive in simple 
force than the lament of Moschus over Bion, or the lines of 



68 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Catullus that begin with "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus"? 
However, I return to that which the study of the ancient 
world can do for our comprehension of the progress and life 
of mankind as a whole. It is the constant aim, not only of the 
historian, but of whosoever desires to have a just view of that 
progress, distinguishing the essential and permanent from the 
accidental and transitory, and noting the great undercurrents 
of which events are only the results and symptoms — it is and 
must be his aim to place before his eyes pictures of what man 
was at various points in his onward march, seeing not only how 
institutions and beliefs grow and decay, but also how tastes and 
gifts, aptitudes and virtues, rise and decline and rise again in 
new shapes, just as the aspects of a landscape change when 
clouds flit over it, or when shafts of light strike it from east or 
south or west. For this purpose it is of the utmost value to 
know human societies in the forms they took when civilised 
society first came into being. How fruitful for such a study 
are the successive epochs of the Greco-Roman world ! Take, 
for example, the latest age of the Roman Republic as we see 
it depicted . by Sallust and Catullus, Appian and Plutarch, 
and best of all in Cicero's speeches and letters. The Republic 
was tottering to its fall : dangers were gathering from within 
and without. Caesar's conquests were bringing Gaul under 
Roman dominion and Britain into the knowledge of civilised 
men. Lucretius was presenting the doctrines of Epicurus as a 
remedy against superstition : Cicero and his friends were trying, 
like Boethius five centuries later, to find consolations in phil- 
osophy. But no one could divine the future, no one foresaw 
the Empire or the advent of a new religion. 

Or take the epoch of Periclean Athens. The memory of 
Salamis, where Aeschylus and his brother had fought, was still 
fresh. Thucydides, not yet a historian, was sailing to and fro 
to his gold-mines in Thrace opposite Thasos. Herodotus was 
reciting the tale of his travels in the cities. Socrates was 
beginning his quest for wisdom by interrogating men in the 
market-place. Athenian fleets held the sea, but the Pelopon- 
nesians were already devastating Attica. Phidias and his pupils 
were finishing the frieze of the Parthenon, Cleon was rising 
into note by the vehemence of his harangues. The same crowd 
that applauded Cleon in the Pnyx listened with enjoyment to the 
Philoctetes of Sophocles, a drama in which there is no action 



LATIN AND GREEK 69 

save the taking away and giving back of a bow, all the rest 
being the play of emotions in three men's breasts, set forth in 
exquisite verse. 

Or go back to the stirring times of Alcaeus and Sappho, 
when Aeolian and Ionian cities along the coasts of the Aegean 
were full of song and lyre, and their citizens went hither and 
thither in ships fighting, and trading, and worshipping at the 
famous shrines where Hellenic and Asiatic religions had begun 
to intermingle, before the barbaric hosts of Persia had descended 
upon those pleasant countries. 

Or ascend the stream of time still further to find, some 
centuries earlier, the most perfect picture of the whole of human 
life that was ever given in two poems, each of them short 
enough to be read through in a summer day. Think in particular 
of one passage of 130 lines, the description of the Shield of 
Achilles in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, where many scenes 
of peace and war, of labour and rejoicing, are presented with 
incomparable vigour and fidelity. Each vignette has been com- 
pleted with few strokes of the brush, but every stroke is instinct 
with life and dazzling with colour. We see one city at peace, 
with a wedding procession in the street and a lawsuit in the 
market-place, and another city besieged, with a battle raging 
on the banks of the river. We see a ploughing, and a harvest, 
and a vintage, and a herd attacked by lions, and a fair pasture 
with fleecy sheep, and, last of all, a mazy dance of youths and 
maidens, "such as once in Crete Daedalus devised for the fair- 
tressed Ariadne." Above these the divine craftsman had set the 
unwearied sun and the full-orbed moon and the other marvels 
wherewith heaven is crowned, and round the rime of the shield 
rolls the mighty strength of the stream of Ocean. 

To carry in our minds such pictures of a long-past world 
and turn back to them from the anxieties of our own time gives 
a refreshment of spirit as well as a wider view of what man 
has been, and is, and may be hereafter. To have immortal 
verse rise every day into memory, to recall the sombre grandeur 
of Aeschylus and the pathetic grandeur of Virgil, to gaze at the 
soaring flight and many-coloured radiance of Pindar, to be 
soothed by the sweetly flowing rhythms of Theocritus, what an 
unfailing delight there is in this ! Must not we who have known 
it wish to hand it on and preserve it for those who will come 
after us? 



70 SELECTED ARTICLES 

THE VALUE OF THE CLASSICS TO THE 
STUDENT OF ENGLISH l 

The case for the classics does not rest upon their value to 
the student of English. That is not the chief reason why they are 
and of right ought to be studied; but it is one reason and a 
good reason. There are times both in war and in grammar 
when it is sound stategy to bring forward the auxiliaries and 
to put the subordinate in a principal position. The present 
seems to be an opportune time for an evolution of this kind. 
For English is now the central study of all public high schools. 
It is in esteem even in vocational institutions of so uncompro- 
mising a type that the word Acropolis, if pronounced distinctly 
within their walls, would sound like the name of a patent 
fertilizer. It is honored in the commercial high schools, both 
as a substitute for subjects that the youth of the land have 
found very troublesome and as the last mark of devotion to 
idealism and patriotism. Your business friend who never 
notifies but always "advises" you that your goods have arrived 
is "strong for English," by which he means spelling and idiom 
that suit his own predilections and conform to the conventions 
of the trade. Indeed, all of Germany and nearly all of the 
United States are in favor of the study of English, though the 
reasons for this partiality are (as the catalogue of an enter- 
prising engineering school once described it own courses) "very 
various." If then it can be shown that some knowledge of the 
classics is needed by the student of English the case for the 
classics is strengthened for everybody. In presenting this need 
I imagine myself addressing, not a body of learned classical 
professors and teachers, but a group of those whom Dr. 
Blimber was accustomed to call "My young friends" — students 
doubtful about beginning or continuing classical studies, but 
ambitious to gain a mastery over English. 

What we all desire as a result of English study is fluency 
and accuracy in our own speech and real understanding and 
appreciation when we read the speech of others. Among ambi- 
tious youth the first object of desire is the increase of available 
vocabulary. Here the facts are reassuring and the opportunities 
unlimited. There are three great funds of words in the English 
vocabulary. There is a fund of native English words, a fund 

1 Joseph V. Denney, Professor of English, Ohio State University. The 
Classical Journal. 9:94-101. December, 1913. 



LATIN AND GREEK 71 

of Romance words which have come to us from Latin through 
the French, and a very large fund which we have derived 
directly from the Latin and Greek. The last two funds are now 
really one huge and ever-increasing word-hoard, though it is 
still useful to remind ourselves that we have three words for 
every idea that we wish to express — three at least, and often 
more than three. With these three funds to draw upon — the 
native fund, the Romance fund, the classical fund — the student 
of English is poverty-stricken if he must forever guess and 
remains ignorant of his capacity to surmise or conjecture. He 
is tiresome, boresome, fatiguing, exhausting, debilitating if a 
freak is always a freak to him and never a caprice, a vagary, 
or an eccentrcity. He lacks experience if he has seen a ghost 
and never an apparition or a specter. He is not even much of 
a trickster if he knows only craft and has neither deceit, subt- 
lety, nor artifice. What satisfaction is there for his feelings in 
calling some dolt a stupid and stopping there? Isn't the fool 
also dull and obtuse, and probably thick-skinned, callous, and 
indurated into the bargain? To pass from vituperation to its 
opposite, the Book of Common Prayer abounds in such 
duplicates as times and occasions, pray and beseech, changes 
and alterations, acknowledge and confess, adorned and beauti- 
fied, assemble and meet together, weighty and important, remis- 
sion and forgiveness, sins and transgressions, requisite and 
necessary, pardon and forgive, dissemble and cloak, image and 
similitude, loving and amiable, enterprized and taken in hand. 
What would Bryant have done with his. beautiful "Fringed 
Gentian" if he had had but the one word "blue" to describe its 
color? or even but the two words, blue and azure? We can 
see his dire need of a three- or four-syllable word in the lines- 
Then doth thy mild and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky — 
Blue, blue as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

The practical needs of the poet are not to be overlooked in 
this materialistic age. Now if this twofold and threefold 
characteristic of our vocabulary were not well-night universal 
it would deserve but passing remark. But it is the big fact about 
English, the fact that especially concerns the man who calls 



72 SELECTED ARTICLES 

himself practical and who seeks fluency and accuracy from his 
study of language. His rightful heritage is three or more words 
for every idea. Does he command them? Do they come when 
he needs them? Is he satisfied with the one word for building 
or house, or does he know also dwelling, shelter, domicile, 
habitation, residence, edifice, structure, fastness, stronghold, 
palace, cottage, hall, hovel, mansion, manor, castle, hut, 
fortress, construction, fortification, retreat, sanctuary- — as he has 
need and occasion to use any one of these? These, whether of 
native or classical origin, are now indiscriminately English 
words. But practical young America will say, "Why should I 
be at the labor of studying Latin in order to add them to my 
usable vocabulary? Why not go straight to the dictionary or 
to a book of synonyms? Why not make lists and memorize 
them?" One reason is that they will not stay memorized, if 
accumulated in any such wholesale or mechanical fashion. The 
dictionary will not tell you what you need to know unless you 
have enough Latin (i) to get the value of suffixes and prefixes, 
(2) to get the root-meaning, and (3) the training to discern the 
original image back of the root-meaning. These things are 
possible only as one acquires one's words to meet a real and 
immediate need of expressing ideas. Chiefly they are the 
result of painstaking translation. 

A second reason is that, what I have said above, about three 
words for every idea, is not strictly true. No matter how 
similar in meaning words may be, there is always a difference 
in their possible applications, a difference due to' tone, spirit, 
temper, to the influence of associated words, or to arbitrary 
usage. The choice of words thus becomes a matter of telling 
or not telling the truth. Expertness in phrase-making and in the 
use of prepositions depends upon a true perception of root- 
images. Burke's expression of a common idea, " In this posture 
things stood," reveals his sense for true association of images. 
Untrained by his Latin he would doubtless have said: "Things 
were about like that." No one ever achieves perfection in this 
difficult business ; the deplorable fact is that so many young 
people never begin it at all. Even a little Latin or Greek is 
valuable here. At least it will enable one to detect the broader 
distinctions — to reach certainty about memoranda, propaganda, 
and formulae, for instance — and it may induce good habit. 
At any rate, no vocational guide that I ever set eyes on is wise 
enough to tell any young American at the beginning of his 



LATIN AND GREEK 73 

high-school course that this part of his education may safely 
be neglected. Even an instructor of the deaf and dumb in 
mat-weaving must needs make an occasional distinction. And is 
it not true that the men of a half-century ago who spoke with 
such .power against the classical training of their day were 
able to make the distinctions by which they carried their cause 
to victory mainly because they had enjoyed the benefits of that 
same classical training? Compare their utterances with those 
of the later breed of Philistines, and the difference is as great 
as that noted by Mark Twain between lightning and the light- 
ning bug. 

The student of accuracy in English needs Latin or Greek 
in order that he may master the Grammar of English. I am 
well aware that teachers of elementary Latin would like it if 
their pupils came to Latin fully competent in English grammar. 
The wish is vain. Only by comparison in kind can grammatical 
concepts be firmly fixed. A second language with which to 
compare the English procedure is a necessity if the English 
grammar is to be mastered. Thousands of people have testified 
to the fact that not until they studied a second language did 
English grammar become clear to them. And the second 
language should by all means be Latin, partly because of the 
completeness of its grammatical apparatus, but chiefly because 
the native English sentence was first made orderly, logical, 
serviceable, and efficient under the influence of the grammar of 
Latin. It was the destruction of the previous Latin civilization 
in England by the Danish invasions of the ninth century that 
suggested to Alfred the need of translations by the few priestly 
scholars still remaining who could render their services in 
English, or translate an epistle into the vernacular. "God 
Almighty be thanked," wrote the pious king, as he thought of the 
ignorance of his clergy, "that we have now any teachers in 
office." Translations followed during the next century, with the 
result that is usual when thought is transferred from a language 
that is equipped with a mature and logical syntax to a language 
still crude and primitive. The English sentence acquired some- 
thing like a standard of grammatical and logical competency; 
not that Latin idiom was bodily transferred, but that English 
idiom became self-conscious and capable of self-improvement. 
The English of the average youth of today needs precisely that 
discipline. One of the chief benefits of the study of the Latin 
grammar and the practice of Latin composition is that the 



74 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Latin syntax compels logical statement. The Latin sentence 
represses waywardness and teaches many lessons of method and 
order that are not easily or economically learned by practice 
in English alone. The English does not compel a boy to stop 
and think what he is about. He does not see the need of it. 
The English grammar is to him a superfluity and an impudent 
interference with the rights of man. He readily concedes, how- 
ever, that it is necessary to attend to grammatical detail when 
he is trying to master another tongue. If that other tongue be 
Latin or Greek it gradually equips him with grammatical con- 
cepts that serve him equally well in practicing his own speech. 
The management of clauses, for instance, of tense, sequence, of 
indirect discourse, of linking apparatus, of position and prepo- 
sition — so troublesome in writing English, is learned through 
Latin as a matter of necessity; it is seldom learned thoroughly 
through English alone, as any journalist can testify or illustrate. 
The right attitude toward questions of English grammar is 
achieved only when there is possibility of constant comparison 
and contrast. It is not pertinent to my puropse here to bring for- 
ward the well-known fact that historically the Latinists in certain 
periods of English literature have not proved a salutary 
influence upon the English sentence. It is sufficient to note 
that the things complained of — involved clauses, and over- 
burdened sentences — are favorite faults of speech with those 
who have shunned Latin for fear of spoiling their English style. 
All that I have said has been on the purely practical level 
and addressed to the very youthful student, who in most cases 
is as yet no student at all. And all of it applies equally well 
to reading, to getting even familiar present-day thought from 
the printed page. But the elementary student has needs beyond 
familiar and present-day thought. He cannot read with pleasure 
and freedom even the carefully selected English classics that 
are set for him in the secondary schools unless through his 
Latin he has gotten an initiation into Roman and Greek ideas. 
Up to this very century English literature has been produced by 
people who were trained in classical ideas, or who, not being so 
trained, at least lived their lives in a society familiar with 
these. The student of English if devoid of Latin and Greek 
must pick and choose his' reading with great care if he would 
maintain his interest for long. Unless he confine himself to 
the Saturday Evening Post and the journal of his trade he 



LATIN AND GREEK 75 

will many times feel himself a stranger, where the reader with 
even little Latin and less Greek will feel at home. He will 
find whole periods of English prose impossible and much of 
English verse beyond his imaginative reach. He must confine 
himself to the contemporaneous, and often suffer the feeling 
of detachment even there. He is debarred from real intel- 
lectual sympathy with no inconsiderable portion of nineteenth- 
century prose and verse — to mention only the more familiar 
names, with portions of Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, the 
Arnolds, the Brownings, the Morris', Landor, Keats, Shelley, 
Byron, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Macaulay, Newman, George 
Eliot, Ruskin, Rossetti, Pater, and even Tom Moore. Of course 
this catalogue would grow very rapidly if he tried to extend 
his reading backward into the eighteenth, seventeenth, and 
sixteenth centuries. No fewer than one hundred and twenty- 
five English poets and prose writers, including most of the 
great names, require mention in such books as Gayley's Classic 
Myths in English Literature. It is not the large number of 
direct allusions to the classics, however, that makes the trouble. 
The difficulty lies deeper. One may work assiduously with 
reference books and may find in them many useful facts. But 
when the proper names are missing and phrases are encountered 
that lie one or two removes from plain statement, enjoyment 
must cease for the student who has no part in that literary 
inheritance which classical culture has bequeathed. To such a 
one, even Lowell's prose will be full of mysterious subtleties 
and dark hints that are untraceable, and consequently offensive 
to the ignorant. Anybody may learn a textbook statement about 
John Milton's English prose and have it ready for examination ; 
but like most things learned for examination it may as well 
be forgotten the next day by those who cannot read Milton's 
English prose itself and get meaning out of it. The textbook 
of English literary history must be taken on faith by one who 
cannot verify even the statements which hurl themselves at him 
in the coarse print, to say nothing of the fine print and the 
footnotes. What real perception of the truth about the nature 
of the influences that are vaguely called classical and pseudo- 
classical can the Latinless student acquire? Yet these influences 
have been always present and at times they have dominated 
whole periods. The fact is that historical criticism may as well 
be abandoned by the student of English who can have no first- 



76 SELECTED ARTICLES 

hand contact with the Latin writers that are said to have 
influenced English writers. Critical terms are baneful things 
when employed inaccurately. As for the scholar's work in 
tracing the origins of literary forms and species, that is of 
course out of the guestion. Even the casual reader of English 
literary history comes not infrequently upon the names of 
Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Homer, and 
Theocritus — and little good it does him. Without a minimum 
(which I dare not specify) of reading in Latin and Greek, not 
much reliance can be placed upon the use of translations by 
the English student, if trustworthy conclusions are expected. 
Imaginative sympathy will accomplish wonders, but imaginative 
sympathy must have at least a slight foundation on which to 
build. 

Aesthetic criticism is not a permanent refuge. No wonder 
that aesthetic criticism has gradually degenerated into mere 
personal opinion. The only possible step left is that already 
taken by some — to break utterly with the past, even with the 
very recent past, and to renounce and denounce all English 
writers whom we find not agreeable to our modernism. The 
penalty that we shall pay for all this is already visible in the 
shallowness and whimsicality of much of our English instruc- 
tion. The future of real English study is bound up with that 
of the other languages and especially Latin and Greek. The 
real issue is not between ancient and modern languages, nor 
between English and other modern languages. It is between 
serious language-study and no worthy language-study at ail- 
not even in English. When that issue is plainly discerned the 
reaction may be expected. Meanwhile the preservation of stand- 
ards in the English work itself imposes upon English teachers 
everywhere the duty of promoting classical studies as a matter 
of self-interest. 



MUST THE CLASSICS GO? ] 

Is classical training necessary in liberal education? To 
appreciate this question we must first know what education 
means. Every man is born into this world ignorant both of 
himself and his surroundings, but to act his part so as to reach 

1 Andrew F. West. North American Review. 138:151-62. February, 



LATIN AND GREEK 77 

success and happiness needs to understand them both. There- 
fore, he must learn ; and having to learn, bust be educated. 
This will involve two processes : 

i. The development of man's power to master himself and 
circumstances, by training every capacity to its highest energy, 
— discipline. 2. Communication of the most valuable knowl- 
edge, — information. Both are necessary. Discipline precedes 
information, because power precedes acquisition. Information 
completes discipline by yielding actual results in the world. In 
a word, discipline gives power to acquire information, and the 
total result is culture. 

The two great instruments of educational discipline and 
information have hitherto been mathematics and language, lead- 
ing to physical, intellectual, and social sciences, and these again 
culminating in a philosophy or study of first principles of all 
things. On this basis our college education has been built. 
None propose excluding mathematics. Few question the need 
of studying language in some form. But when the classical 
languages are proposed as essential to liberal education, objec- 
tions arise and pronounced attacks are made. I propose merely 
three things : 

I. To enumerate the objectors and answer their objections. 
II. To state the positive argument for classical training. 
III. To state the reasons for retaining Greek as well as Latin. 

I. The objectors and their objections. These are: 

1. Men of active rather than contemplative temperament. 
They care chiefly for what prepares immediately for some spe- 
cific calling, and are so absorbed in civil and commercial activ- 
ities that they value only what bears obviously in these lines. 
John Stuart Mill has well shown the weakness of this position : — 

"Experience proves that there is no one study or pursuit which, prac- 
ticed to the exclusion of all others, does not narrow and pervert the 
mind; breeding in it a class of prejudices special to that pursuit, besides a 
general prejudice common to all narrow specialities against large views 
from an incapacity to take in and appreciate the grounds of them. We 
need to know more than the one thing that is to be our principal occu- 
pation. This should be known as well as it can be known, but we should 
also acquire a clear general knowledge of the leading truths of all the 
great subjects of human interest." 

2. Those who have never studied the classics. Many are 
college graduates. But their objection, if good, is good against 
any study they may have failed to appreciate from want of 



78 SELECTED ARTICLES 

proper teaching, of application, or of capacity. Herbert Spencer, 
a pronounced enemy of the classics, does not profess to read 
them except in translations. In this respect, many college men 
resemble Mr. Spencer. 

3. Those who are imbued with the money-making spirit of 
the age. These, if they believed that studying Greek and Latin 
was the road of wealth, would all worship classical culture. But 
to-day the obvious, the "effective," the "realistic," the perversely 
vulgar, nursed on money-worship and covered skin-deep with 
affected cultivation, is too apt to crowd out the thoughtful and 
(refined, and smother to death the heroic. Neither the hostility' 
nor the approbation of this element counts for anything, because 
wholly ignorant and selfish. 

4. Those who dislike classical studies because of distaste for 
any severe training, and a corresponding relish for lighter arts 
and accomplishments. They want culture only as far as it is 
immediately enjoyable. They desire results without the process, 
and so would resist thorough training in anything. Hence they 
answer themselves. 

5. Those who believe literature necessary, but think modern 
languages should be substituted, as being genuine literature, 
and a necessary part of modern life. But to study modern 
languages we do not need to displace the classics. The trouble 
here is not the difficulty of making place for an extensive 
language course, but the prevalence of bungling methods of 
teaching, and the excessive time wasted on elementary mathe- 
matics, especially arithmetic, in so many schools. No such 
trouble exists in Germany. There, only one-sixth of the time, 
at the most, goes to mathematics, while to language even the 
Realschulen, or scientific schools, give two-sixths, and the Gym- 
nasia four-sixths of their time. If, then, there is room for both, 
why not teach both? Suppose, however, we have to make the 
choice. The reasons for retaining the classics would be most 
cogent. 

First. Because they are immeasurably superior to modern 
languages as means of discipline. Their structure is regular 
and highly complex. Modern languages do not contain material 
out of which to construct a logical grammar like theirs. What 
does English, French, or German grammar amount to?. Simply 
debris of the classical languages, mixed with barbaric elements. 

Second. Even if modern languages equaled the classics in 



LATIN AND GREEK 79 

structure, they would be less likely to be used consistently for 
discipline. So much time necessarily goes to mastering pro- 
nunciation and acquiring merely facility of use, which necessi- 
tates only inferior mental effort, that this is often mistaken for 
mastery of the language. Furthermore, modern languages are 
too near our own modes of thinking to help us enlarge our 
knowledge in kind by entering widely different fields of thought, 
as we need to do. 

Third. No modern languages have yet stood the great test 
of permanence which the classics have now endured for more 
than twenty centuries. Only a dozen generations have read 
Shakespeare. But Homer has already led the way to literary 
immortality for a hundred generations, with Plato, Virgil, and 
Horace not far behind. 

Fourth. Modern languages, just because modern, are grow- 
ing, and hence ever changing. This unfits them to be a perma- 
nent basis for culture. 

6. Some advocates of physical science. Their objection is 
that science (meaning physical science) furnishes better disci- 
pline and information than the classics or anything else. Sup- 
pose it does. Must we study only physical science? Is there 
no room for any other training? May not classical training be 
scientific too? If correct, must it not be scientific? 

But this objection is composite. Let us examine its parts; 
they are as clearly stated in Herbert Spencer's book, "Educa- 
tion," as anywhere. 

"But now mark that, while for the training of mere memory, science 
is as good as, if not better than, language, it has an immense superiority 
in the kind of memory it cultivates. . . . Language establishes 'con- 
nections of ideas' based upon facts 'in a great measure accidental,* but 
science upon facts 'mostly necessary.' Though words and their meanings 
have relations 'in some sense natural'; yet since 'in the acquisition of 
-languages as ordinarily carried on, these natural relations between words 
and their meanings are not habitually traced nor the laws regulating them 
explained, it must be admitted that they are commonly learned as fortui- 
tous relations. On the other hand, the relations presented by science are 
casual relations, and, when properly taught, are understood as such.' 
Language 'exercises memory only, the other exercises both memory and 
understanding. " 

What greater error could be written? Examine it: science 
is superior in "the kind of memory it cultivates," — that is, causal 
memory. Is there no causal memory in learning the structure 
of the Greek verb, the "build" of complex etymology, the orderly 
logic of syntax? Can it avoid being "causal ? Are there not 
laws of discourse, necessities in order and display of thought? 



80 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Is antique civilization — the one world-wide civilization of his- 
tory, all whose features are in its literature, whose rise, organic 
growth, decay, and death, run in long lines for centuries, to be 
learned by rote? 

But Mr. Spencer's contrast is made out in unfair language. 
It is not allowable to draw inferences, as if from premises of 
equal value, by phrasing things in this way, "the acquisition 
of languages, as ordinarily carried on," and then, "the relations 
which science presents are casual relations, and, when properly 
taught, are understood as such." Of course they are, and so are 
they in language, "when properly taught." His next objection 
— that science better cultivates the judgment — is of the same 
nature as his remarks on memory. He fails to see that classical 
study deals not merely with words, but with things, with a vast 
body of remarkable fundamental phenomena, and hence the 
judgment must be highly exercised. 

Mr. Spencer next insists that science is best for moral 
training. 

"The learning of languages tends, if anything, to increase the already 
undue respect for authority. . . . By the pupil, the teacher's or 
grammar's dicta are received as unquestionable. His constant attitude of 
mind is that of submission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary result 
is to accept without inquiry whatever is established. Quite opposite is 
the frank, independent attitude of mind generated by the cultivation of 
science." 

This is simple quibbling. Apply it to any science, say chemis- 
try, and you could not require a student to "submit" to the 
"dogmatic teaching" that inculcates authoritatively (though 
only provisionally) its symbols, atomic weights, formulae, specific 
gravities, and entire stock-knowledge. So in history, in teaching 
events and dates. So in arithmetic, numbers and their relations 
must first be learned arbitrarily or not learned at all. So in 
teaching a child the alphabet or even his own name. 

But this is self-destructive also, as already hinted. All teach- 
ing must be instilled dogmatically at first, and, unless the pupil 
accepts it, no progress of any sort is possible. Now, in the 
classics, "when properly taught," and in all genuine teaching, 
this dogmatic communication must be received, but received 
provisionally as a basis for further investigations, to be verified 
or disproved, as the pupil's experience and discerning powers 
increase. What, then, becomes of Mr. Spencer's argument for 
scientific education? Science, to be taught, must be "dogmatic" 
in its beginnings, or else becomes unteachable, and must "go." 



LATIN AND GREEK 81 

Mr. Spencer lastly claims transcendent value for science 
against the classics as "information." But is physical science 
the only science? Is not man, is not humanity full of scientific 
phenomena? Is it not man's interest to know himself, in order 
to become what he ought to be, more than to know or do any- 
thing else? Are not his thoughts the expression of himself, and 
language the outside, of which all human thought is the inside? 
In this light, language is as worthy of scientific study as exter- 
nal nature. 

7. Those who have suffered from erroneous methods of 
teaching. Here is the strongest source of attack. A great field 
is occupied by teachers mostly unacquainted with the art of 
teaching. In mathematics this difficulty is less troublesome. 
Everything there is "exactly right" or "exactly wrong." Method, 
the key to all education, lies on the surface and is simple rigorous 
deduction, constantly asserting itself y and revenging its violations 
immediately. It is therefore easily acquired, and hence good 
elementary mathematical teachers are numerous and commercially 
cheap. Not so in classics. Here we encounter a grammar the 
most perfect yet discovered, constructed from languages rich 
to completeness in a vast variety of inflectional forms, with 
vocabularies where every word, even every word-element, indi- 
cates a distinct thought, with a syntax articulated to every 
imaginable kind and form of thinking; we meet a literature 
embracing acknowledged models in every style, and stored with 
the wisdom of a great civilization now passed away, but on 
which we stand. Method does not lie on the surface here. It 
must be hunted out with great patience, and needs thorough 
philosophical powers, first to discover, and next to apply it in 
teaching. Hence, good classical teachers are rare, and conse- 
quently expensive. Here the financial necessities of schools 
come in, and secure cheap teachers who, of course, do cheap 
teaching. Ignorant of the rationale of their subject, their pupils 
become still more so, and plod drearily along or else evade 
their tasks, receiving a minimum of benefit outweighed by a 
. maximum of mental injury. Hence, many array themselves 
against the classics. Their hatred of the caricature is just; their 
enmity to the culture itself is deplorable. 

II. The positive argument for classical training: 

Every man's entire life is occupied with one continuous pro- 
cess of thought, of which the simplest, easiest, and one universal 



82 . SELECTED ARTICLES 

instrument is language. At the basis of knowledge lies the fact 
that we think of things. What we think is thought, and the ex- 
pression of thought is language. If our thought tallies exactly 
with the thing thought of, we have an exactly correct thought, 
and if expression tallies with thought we have an exactly cor- 
rect expression. Things underlie thought; thought underlies 
language. Here is the heart of the subject. Only as language 
and thought coincide, can knowledge itself be communicated 
and preserved; while so long as they are equivalent, language 
is as good as thought, just as a sound paper currency is as good 
as the gold it represents. 

What does all this necessitate in education? Not teaching 
all languages. This is practically impossible. It therefore in- 
volves a selection of those best suited to accomplish the pro- 
cesses of education, — discipline and information. If, then, we 
can discover which languages these are, we must adopt them as 
the basis of all thorough literary education. 

For educational purposes we make two classes, a man's 
native tongue and foreign languages. The first we must know, 
of course, as it is our chief means of intercourse. But we need 
more, both to understand English itself and enlarge our range 
of knowledge and so obtain completeness of power. Hence we 
need foreign languages. These are of two sorts, ancient and 
modern. From the first class all are prepared to rule out Ori- 
ental languages. What remains? Latin and Greek, the two 
fundamental languages of European culture wherever it has 
spread. From the second we rule out as unessential all except 
French and German. I firmly believe we can teach all four, — 
Latin, Greek, French, German, — with English as well, under any 
well-ordered system, and if we could not, modern languages 
might easily be acquired outside of our schools. 

However, I ground the claim of the classical languages to a 
preeminent place on their immense superiority over all other 
languages, living or dead, as means of mental discipline. Let 
us hear Mr. Mill's argument for this : — 

"Even as mere languages, no modern European language is so valu- 
able a discipline to the intellect as those of Greece and Rome, on account 
of their very regular and complicated structure. Consider for a moment 
what grammar is. It is the most elementary part of logic. It is the 
beginning of the analysis of the thinking process. The principles and 
rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made 
to correspond with the universal forms of thought. The distinctions be- 
tween the various parts of speech, between the cases of nouns, the modes 
and tenses of verbs, the functions of participles, are distinctions in 



LATIN AND GREEK 83 

thought, not merely in words. Single nouns and verbs express objects 
and events, many of which can be cognized by the senses ; but the modes 
of putting nouns and verbs together, express the relations of objects and 
events, which can be cognized only by the intellect; and each different 
mode corresponds to a different relation. The structure of every sen- 
tence is a lesson in logic. The various rules of syntax oblige us to dis- 
tinguish between the subject and predicate of a proposition, between the 
agent, the action, and the thing acted 'upon; to mark when an idea is 
intended to modify a quality, or merely to unite with some other idea; 
what assertions are categorical, what only conditional; whether the in- 
tention is to express similarity or contrast, to make a plurality of asser- 
tions conjunctively or disjunctively; what portions of a sentence, though 
grammatically complete within themselves, are mere members or subordi- 
nate parts of the assertion made by the entire sentence. Such things 
form the subject matter of universal grammar; and the languages which 
teach it best are those which have the most definite rules, and which 
provide distinct forms for the greatest number of distinctions in thought, 
so that if we fail to attend precisely and accurately to any of these 
we cannot avoid committing a solecism in language. In these qualities 
the classical languages have an incomparable superiority over every mod- 
ern language, and over all languages, dead or living, which have a liter- 
ature worth being generally studied." 

So, too, in their value as literature. Mr. Mill continues: — 

"But the superiority of the literature, itself, for the purposes of edu- 
cation, is still more marked and decisive. Even in the substantial value 
of the matter of which it is the vehicle, it is very far from having been 
superseded. The discoveries of the ancients in science have been greatly 
surpassed, and as much of them as is still valuable loses nothing by being 
incorporated in modern treatises; but what does not so well admit of be- 
ing transferred bodily, and has been very imperfectly carried off, even 
in piecemeal, is the treasure which they accumulated of what may be 
called the wisdom of life; the rich store of experience of human nature 
and conduct, which the acute and observing minds of those ages, aided 
in their observations by the greater simplicity of manners and life, con- 
signed to their writings, and most of which retains all its value. Their 
writings are replete with remarks and maxims of singular good sense 
and penetration, applicable both to political and to private life; and the 
actual truths we find in them are even surpassed in value by the en- 
couragement and help they give us in the pursuit of truth. 

"Human invention has never produced anything so valuable, in the 
way both of stimulation and of discipline, to the inquiring intellect, as 
the dialectics of the ancients, of which many of the works of Aristotle 
illustrate the theory and those of Plato exhibit the practice. No modern 
writings come near to these in teaching, both by precept and example, 
the way to investigate truth on those subjects, so vastly important to us, 
which remain matters of controversy from the difficulty or impossibility 
of bringing them to a directly experimental test. To question all things; 
never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine, either from 
ourselves or from other people, without a rigid scrutiny by negative 
criticism, letting no fallacy or incoherence or confusion of thought slip 
by unperceived; above all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word 
clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition 
before assenting to it; these are the lessons we learn from the ancient 
dialecticians. With all this vigorous management of the negative element, 
they inspire no skepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to 
its pursuit. The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth 
and for applying it to its highest uses, pervades these writers, Aristotle 
no less than Plato, though Plato has incomparably the greater power of 
imparting those feelings to others. In cultivating, therefore, the ancient 
languages as our best literary education, we are all the while laying an 
admirable foundation for ethical and philosophical culture. 

"In purely literary excellence, in perfection of form, the preeminence 
of the ancients is not disputed. In every department which they attempted 



84 SELECTED ARTICLES 

■ — and they attempted almost all — their composition, like their sculpture, 
has been to the greatest modern artists an example to be looked up to 
with hopeless admiration, but of inappreciable value as a light on high 
guiding their own endeavors." 

Has not Mr. Mill covered the whole case? 

III. The reasons for retaining Greek as well as Latin : — 

1. There is time to teach both without injuring other studies. 
This has been abundantly proved in the Prussian gymnasia, or 
classical schools. Latin and Greek form the central core of 
instruction, occupying half their entire time. They also teach 
the Christian religion, German, French, history, geography, 
arithmetic, algebra, plane and solid geometry, plane trigonome- 
try, natural history, physics, writing, drawing, music, gymnas- 
tics. Where do they save time for this? Mainly in mathe- 
matics and physical science, which receive jointly less than half 
the time given Latin and Greek, or but a trifle more than is 
given Greek alone. 

We should imitate the German example. First, by lessening 
the excessive time devoted to such study, for example, as arith- 
metic. In some States it has received over half the entire school- 
time in certain years. Why should mathematics, either in gen- 
eral or in particular, receive three times the attention it receives 
in Germany? Second, we should teach Greek better, both before 
and in college. Here time is saved by really using it. Our 
trouble is not too much Greek, but too much badly taught 
Greek. 

2. Two important languages are better than one. Especially 
is this true in Latin and Greek, whose differences are even more 
remarkable than their resemblances. 

3. While these differences give Latin a directer connection 
with our civilization, yet Greek offers a finer instrument for 
personal culture. Latin is the mother of modern tongues, the 
language of law, history, empire, practical energy, collective 
movements of men. But Greek is the mother-tongue of pure 
thought, the perfect instrument of human reason. The inex- 
haustible source for deriving the newest scientific terms to 
record the latest advances of thought in other languages, it yet 
never seeks to borrow for itself. It is subtler and more exact 
than Latin, more distinct in separate forms, more complex in 
masses, and more intimate in its mental attitude. 

4. The Greek spirit, best studied at its original sources, is 
distinctively the great incentive to high creative effort in art. 



LATIN AND GREEK 85 

Antique sculpture and architecture — indispensable to art-students 
to-day — were its early children. Homer was its first poet, and 
liis spell has worked in every world-renowned epic since. Its 
light was hidden in the Dark Ages, but when the Reformation 
unlocked man's conscience, the Florentine Greeks unlocked his 
intellect. Canova, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michael Angelo, 
— these were but Greeks late born. Greek rhythms rule modern 
music. Read the scores of Palestrina, any fugue of Bach, or 
Beethoven's symphonies. Read Wagner's great letter on "The 
Music of the Future." All are Greek throughout. 

5. It is the truly scientific spirit. Not that the Greeks ob- 
served so many facts, but that they taught the world how to 
think. Huxley to-day vindicates Aristotle's scientific acuteness. 
Agassiz has shown that he also observed important facts about 
Mediterranean fishes, and, though the fishes remained abundant, 
the facts were only brought to light in modern times by con- 
sulting Aristotle's work. The facts were the same ■> the observers 
were not Aristotles. Passing these minutiae, look at our 
1 standard scientific conceptions: "ideas," "method," "theory," 
"practice," "hypothesis," "energy," "atoms," and the nomencla- 
ture of science, — all essentially Greek. Examine conflicting 
schools of thought. All have Greek prototypes. Men to-day 
are naturally — what the Greeks first were historically, — stoics 
and epicureans, dogmatists and skeptics, materialists and ideal- 
ists, agnostics and theists, and battle in the endless war of ideas 
bequeathed from their Greek ancestors. The stream of history 
is one. Who shall divide it? 

6. Lastly, Latin itself is injured by separating it from Greek. 
Withdrawing Greek means crippling Latin. This helps to dis- 
integrate classical culture, and so disastrously affects liberal 
education. As to the injury done Latin. This follows from 
the relations of the two languages, but I pass this and again 
appeal to the invaluable experience of Germany. The studies 
of the Gymnasia have been already stated. Alongside of this 
stands the Realschule, whose general make-up is the same, 
except that, though Latin is retained, Greek is dropped, English 
and chemistry added, and mathematics and science increased 
one-half. In revised plans of instruction issued in 1882 for 
secondary schools, by the Ministry of Education, and containing 
criticisms on the past twenty-five years' experience, these com- 
ments occur: "In the Realschulen the result from the Latin 



86 SELECTED ARTICLES 

instruction by no means corresponds either with the amount of 
time devoted to it or to the importance assigned this instruction 
in the general plan of these institutions." This arises from the 
small number of hours given Latin, and from the excess of 
natural science which has proved "decidedly disadvantageous." 
No such complaints arise about gymnasial teaching either of 
Latin or science. Wherein does the Realschule fail? Just where 
it differs from the Gymnasia — that is, in the absence of Greek 
and consequent excess of science. "The main point," says the 
"Opinion" of the University of Berlin, "is that the instruction 
given in the Realschule lacks a central point; hence the unstead- 
iness in its system of teaching. ... In a word, it has not 
been possible to find an equivalent for the (two) classical 
languages as a center of instruction." 

As to the injury done to liberal education. To prove this I 
take the best test in the world, — comprehensive educational 
experience of undoubted authority. In 1870 the Prussian Min- 
istry of Education determined to try the experiment of granting 
university privileges to Realschulen graduates alongside of those 
coming from Gymnasia. After over ten years of such trial, the 
Philosophical Faculty of the University of Berlin has recorded 
its judgment on the matter in an "Opinion" addressed to the 
Ministry of Education. This is the central faculty of the uni- 
versity, including all departments except Law, Medicine, and 
Theology. It numbers over one hundred instructors, and pro- 
vides about two hundred courses of lectures. It enrolls such 
names as Helmholtz the physicist, Kirchhoff in spectrum analysis, 
Hofmann in chemistry, Ranke and Droysen in history, Mommsen 
and Curtius in the classics, and Zeller in philosophical criticism. 
If we desired a supreme court of culture to decide the classical 
question, to what better tribunal could we appeal than this? — 
the central faculty of the most illustrious university of the 
best educated nation in the world. Its judgment, always weighty, 
is here simply irresistible, because based upon careful investiga- 
tion, and unanimous. 

The "Opinion" rests upon the testimony of those instructors 
who have taught Realschule and Gymnasia graduates together. 
These are the professors of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, 
descriptive natural science, philosophy, economics, statistics, and 
modern languages. Their testimony, detailed with great clear- 
ness, is strongly adverse to allowing Realschule graduates a 



LATIN AND GREEK 87 

continuance of university privileges. Many grave evils due to 
their admission are enumerated, and the Faculty expresses the 
conviction that, unless Prussia is ready to surrender her historic 
university system, "it is doubly hazardous" to shut their eyes 
to causes that, unchecked, will bring about this deplorable result. 
The essence of their judgment is in these words: — 

"The preparatory education acquired in Realschulen is, taken 
altogether, inferior to that guaranteed by the Gymnasia." This 
is for many reasons, "but above all, because the ideality of the 
scientific sense, interest in learning not dependent on nor limited 
by practical aims, but ministering to the liberal education of 
the mind as such, the many-sided and widely extended exercise 
of the thinking power, and an acquaintance with the classical 
bases of our civilization can be satisfactorily cultivated only 
in our institutions of classical learning." Such is the strongest 
plea yet made for classical education in all its integrity. Is 
it sufficient? If not, what can be? 

Greek need not go. Let it remain. Rather let it begin to 
come. It was born in the morning of history. Mythology fabled 
that its heroes were the children of immortals, and the records 
of humanity promise to confirm that claim. It schooled 
antiquity; it has been the historic safeguard for freedom of 
thought; it awakened the modern mind; it contains the most 
precious literary treasures of the race. Its corporeal form — the 
ancient civilization — has perished. Its material works of art, of 
priceless value, survive only in the crumbling column, the 
ruined temple, or the statue insecurely housed in some museum 
against Vandals of future time. But its best monument is its 
literature, multiplied a thousand-fold by the printer's art and 
imbedded in succeeding civilized thought. This still remains to 
'challenge mankind in "charmed accents." In the pages of its 
texts, saved by centuries of diligence, the scholar by his quiet 
(lamp reads back, through long perspectives of perfect thought, 
•to the very beginnings of things intellectual. He gains a view- 
point where all lines of his intellectual being center and whence 
they broadly radiate. He sees the past sweeping on through the 
present and flowing widely into the far future. He sees that 
humanity, both individually and in the mass, is thus always one. 
and its generations, separate in time, united in nature ; and so, 
"instead of studying Greek because it is Greek, he studies it to 
understand himself. 



88 SELECTED ARTICLES 

THE MEASUREMENTS OF EFFECTS OF LATIN 
ON ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF HIGH 
SCHOOL STUDENTS IN COM- 
MERCIAL COURSES * 

In our own country today, even among the educated, only 
too few recognize the importance of the Latin element in the 
English vocabulary. Rarely do we find the case for Latin stated 
more forcibly than in the words of Prof. Page, of Dartmouth 
College. 2 

As a matter of fact, the extent to which our scientific words 
are taken from the Latin may be seen at a glance by quoting 
from well-known books in science such statements as the fol- 
lowing : "The aqueous solution has a neutral reaction ;" 3 and 
again : "This question of the influence of the solvent on the 
molecular weight of the dissolved substance is one of practical 
importance."* 

That the vocabulary of commerce has been taken from the 
Latin nearly to as great a degree as the vocabulary of science 
is evident if one will merely read at random a page or two 
of any textbook in commercial geography, commerical law, or 
history of commerce. Hence, we are not surprised to find the 
following statement in the Century Dictionary ; "The vocabulary 
of literature and commerce contains a majority of words of 
foreign origin, chiefly Latin or Greek." 5 

The inference, therefore, seems to be clear, that a commer- 
cial student, unless he is to be seriously handicapt in the struggle 
of life thru ignorance of the meaning and use of English words 
of Latin origin, which form so large a part of the vocabulary 
of commerce, ought to be thoroly grounded in the Latin language. 

Thus it happens that in the Dorchester High School not 
only college preparatory and scientific pupils study Latin, but 
commercial students as well. In fact, during the present year 
there are seven sections of commercial or vocational Latin, 
numbering in all nearly 275 students. 

1 Albert S. Perkins. Educational Review. 52:501-6. December, 1916. 

2 Ninth Annual Bulletin of the Classical Association of New England, 
p. 12. "If the bone and sinew of the English language are Anglo-Saxon, 
the brain of it is Latin and Greek. Both the scientifically exact state- 
ment of any but the most elementary facts, and the expression of all 
abstract thought, in English, depend mainly upon words of classical origin." 

3 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Vol. 2, p. 377. 

4 Walker, Introduction to physical chemistry, p. 194. 

6 Vol. III,p. 1932, quoted from G. P. Marsh, Lectures in the English 
language, XXVIII. 



LATIN AND GREEK 89 

The circumstances which led to the placing of Latin in the 
commercial curriculum, together with the actual working of the 
course, have been described at some length in two earlier papers. 1 
On this occasion, therefore, I will merely state that the course 
in commercial Latin is for two years, and differs from the 
college preparatory Latin in making the study of English 
derivatives its chief aim. The pupils try to find in their English 
dictionaries as many derivatives as they can from all Latin roots 
they meet, both in the beginners' book and from the authors 
read; they apply prefixes and suffixes to the simple roots, and 
record in notebooks all derivates found, classified as to parts of 
speech, and defined. The meaning and use of the derivatives 
are made familiar by frequent drills and written exercises. 

We are told that "our language has appropriated a full 
quarter of the Latin vocabulary, besides what is has gained 
by transferring Latin meanings to native words." 2 In this con- 
nection it is interesting to note that in the first year and a half 
of the commercial Latin course we have actually met. over 700 
Latin roots. In this number are included the words found in 
the beginners' book, and in short stories, and extracts from 
Caesar's Gallic War red during the half term of the second 
year. It is safe to' say that there are at least 200 more roots in 
the selections from Ovid, Cicero and Vergil we shall read during 
the rest of the year. Of the roots already cataloged, only 63 
yield less than five derivatives, while facio yields 173, not count- 
ing the words with the suffix "fy," sto yields 172, plico 155, verto 
133, capio 132, the root pend and the verb pono 116 each, fero 
no, rego 106, specio 89, sono 87, modus 84, premo 81, video 
79, creo 75 and initio 54. The great majority, however, of 
the Latin words yield from 10 to 20 derivatives each. The 
advantage of grouping so many derivaties about a common root 
is apparent to all. Furthermore, by what method could pupils 
more effectively fix the meanings of this large number of Latin 
roots than by constant translation of Latin into English, by 
frequent practice in reading at sghit, and by recording in note- 
books the new Latin words, and reciting from their notebooks 
the words they have had before, in the daily routine of the 
classroom ? 

The help afforded high school boys and girls in spelling 

1 Latin as a Practical Study, Classical Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 7, April, 
19 1 3, and Latin as a Vocational Study in the Commercial Course, Ibid., 
Vol. X, No. 1, October, 1914. 

2 Greenough and Kittredge, Words and their ways in English speech, 
p. 106. 



go SELECTED ARTICLES 

English words derived from the Latin may be illustrated by 
taking a few simple examples : thus, annihilate, from ad, to, 
and nihil, nothing; de-legate, from de, down from, and legatus, 
representative ; equanimity, from equ in aequus, even, level, and 
animus, mind; efficient, from efficens, the present participle of 
efficio, and this from ex, out of, and facio, to do — hence the two 
fs and tent. Such examples might be multiplied almost in- 
definitely. 

At the suggestion of Prof. Holmes, of the Department of 
Education of Harvard University, early in the year 1914 a 
series of measurements of Latin and non-Latin commercial 
pupils of equal ability was made by the English department of 
the Dorchester High School, to determine the added power in 
English vocabulary acquired by the study of Latin. 1 In five 
measurements two groups of pupils were selected, one in the 
second year of Latin, and the other in the second year of 
a modern language. Such pupils were chosen that each 
group had the same average mark in Latin, on the one 
hand, and modern language, on the other. In the selection of 
the two groups, the marks in English were also taken into 
account, with the result, in actual figures, that the non-Latin, 
group in the two studies averaged 0.5 of 1 per cent the higher. 
To. these five measurements is added a sixth, made in June, 
1913. In selecting the two groups of pupils of equal ability 
for this measurement, the home room teacher took into account 
not only foreign language and English II, as was the case in. 
measurements 1-5, but all studies the pupils had taken during 
the year. Altogether, 76 pupils were included in the six measure- 
ments. 

The results were as follows : 

Averages 

January and February, 19 14 Latin Non-Latin 

1. Spelling 82.5 72.6 

2. Use of words in sentences 57.5 40.6 

3. Definitions and parts of speech 69.5 33.3 

4. Meaning of words and spelling 57.0 27.5 

5. Excellence in vocabulary 36.0 6.8 

June, 1913 

6. Meaning of words and spelling...... 65.3 12.3 

6)367.8 6)193.1 

61.3 32.18 

32.18 



Difference 29. 12 

1 Classical Journal, Vol. X, No. 1, October, 19 14, p. 11. 



LATIN AND GREEK 91 

In No. 5 the pupils wrote upon the subject, What I Like to 
Do Best. Moreover, since practically every second-year pupil 
could write at least passably on such a subject, it was decided 
to make the basis of comparison, not the average of the two 
groups, but the percentage of rating above the passing mark. 
Furthermore, in this vocabulary test, emphasis was laid, not 
merely upon words of Latin origin, but upon any words out of 
the ordinary, from whatsoever source. The wide difference in 
the results— 36.0 per cent and 6.8 per cent — would seem to 
indicate that the work in commercial or vocational Latin gives 
the pupils the dictionary habit, the results of which extend far 
beyond the English derivatives actually studied. 

In No. 6 the words were taken entirely from Franklin's 
Autobiography and from Silas Marner, which the pupils of 
both groups had just read, and were not of unusual difficulty, 
consisting of such words, for example, as asperity, promiscuous, 
mortuary. Yet, by referring to the results — 65.3 per cent and 
12.3 per cent — it will be seen that to the non-Latin group of 
commercial pupils such words were practically meaningless. 

In this test among the seventeen non-Latin pupils the highest 
grade was 30 per cent, and five zeros were recorded. In the 
Latin group, on the other hand, the lowest mark was 30 per 
cent, while one pupil received 100 per cent, two 90 per cent, two 
80 per cent, five 70 per cent, and only three below 50 per cent. 

In view of such results with commercial pupils the question 
naturally suggests itself : Why should not the drill in derivatives 
be extended to the college preparatory classses? Judging from 
the reports of the investigation of Mr. Castle at Harvard as 
to the average college student's knowledge — or rather, ignor- 
ance — of English, this question is peculiarly apropos at the 
present time. As things are now, however, the secondary-school 
Latin teacher has little time, even if he has the inclination, to 
go beyond the bare requirements for admission to college. In 
that case, how would it do to have work in English derivatives 
required for admission to college — optional, perhaps, with 
advanced Latin composition? Such a requirement, very likely, 
would result in a shifting of emphasis in the teaching of high 
school Latin. Translation, it is hoped, would become less a 
bore, > since it would serve as a means of fixing the meaning 
of the roots from which the English words are derived. Further- 
more, the severity of the grind in syntax ought to be noticeably 
relaxed. In fact, would it be too much to expect that interest 



92 SELECTED ARTICLES 

might be stimulated all along the line? Furthermore, if such 
a shifting of emphasis were to be made, as the result of a new 
requirement in English derivatives, is there not good reason 
to hope that fewer high school pupils might fall by the way- 
side, in the first two years of the study of Latin, and that the 
average college freshman's grasp on English might be perceptibly 
strengthened? Would not such results be a consummation 
devoutly to be wished? 



THE CLASSICS IN BRITISH EDUCATION x 

Two main points have to be discussed : first, the educational 
value of the classics; secondly, the possibility of making a place 
for them in the curriculum alongside of the other subjects which 
ought to form part of it. 

The Classical Tradition 

The Greek and Latin classes form a part, and historically 
the most important part, of what are commonly known as the 
Humanities. The Humanities comprise those subjects which 
deal with man in his relation to other human beings as a member 
of society, as contrasted with Natural Science, or the subjects 
which deal with the universe of nature and with man in his 
relation to it. On the one side we have history, literature, 
language, philosophy, law; on the other astronomy, geology, 
botany, chemistry, physics, mechanics, mathematics. It is waste 
of time to discuss which of these two main branches of educa- 
tion is the more important; for both are obviously necessary. 
What we have to consider is how to get the best out of both; 
how to equip the young mind with both portions of the armoury 
of life. 

When the foundations of European education were laid, the 
classics and theology monopolized the whole field. There were 
no other languages or literatures known that were worth study, 
no histories comparable with those of the ancients, no philosophy 
or law but those of Greece and Rome, and but little science or 
mathematics. Modern education consequently was founded on 
the Bible and the classics, and a great tradition of classical 

1 The classics in British Education. Reconstruction Problems No. 21. 
British Ministry of Reconstruction. 19 19. 



LATIN AND GREEK 93 

education was firmly established in all civilized countries. Only 
gradually and comparatively lately have modern languages pro- 
duced literatures in any sense comparable with those of Greece 
and Rome ; only more lately has science come to take a prominent, 
perhaps a predominant, position in our daily life; only within 
the last generation or two has either subject been organised as 
an instrument for general education. 

Hence it was through no perversity of our ancestors, but by 
the natural force of circumstances, that the classics have formed 
the main feature of the curriculum of all secondary schools that 
are more than half a century old, and that classics have a 
tradition in education which is matched by no other subject. 1 
This fact, however, though it entitles them to respect, does not 
entitle them to continued exclusive possession now that other 
subjects have, so to speak, arrived at manhood. What we now 
have to seek is fair play for all, and see that in letting in the 
new do not lose valuable elements which only the old can 
give us. 

The Claims of Other Subjects 

Let us grant first ungrudgingly the claims of the other sub- 
jects. No reasonable person will deny that the study of natural 
science is of vital practical importance for the life of the modern 
world; that it is a stimulating and ennobling exercise of the 
mind; that every child should be shown something of the forces 
and the wonders of the world in which he lives, and should 
learn something of the rigorous methods employed in the 
pursuit of scientific knowledge. Equally true is it that modern 
history has a value, both practical and educational, which it had 
not attained a couple of centuries ago, and that the citizen of 
a modern state should know the outlines of the history of his 
own country, and at least the more recent history of the other 
great civilised nations with which we are in contact. One might 
go further, and say that one of the serious dangers which 
threaten our present polity is the ignorance of history on the 
part of the mass of the electorate, which deprives their political 
judgment of a much needed ballast. Modern languages, too, 
have educational possibilities which they never had before; not 
merely because we travel more and want to ask our way and 

1 This is emphatically stated in the recent Report of the Prime Min- 
ister's Committee on the position of Modern Languages in the Educational 
System of Great Britain. 



94 SELECTED ARTICLES 

order our dinner in foreign countries, but because there are 
great literatures in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian 
which it is good for us to read, and because it is important 
. for us to comprehend the thoughts of peoples with whom our 
own life is ever more and more closely woven. Further, the 
purely utilitarian considerations are wholly on the side of the 
modern subjects. For the conduct of daily life, of commerce, 
of industry, of politics, we want modern science, modern 
languages, and modern (though not exclusively modern) history. 
But here we touch on the great peril of modern education, the 
danger lest in our pursuit of the immediately utilitarian we 
lose the vital spiritual element which is our ultimate goal. 

Value of the Classics 

It is because the classics contain elements of the highest 
spiritual and intellectual value which cannot be obtained else- 
where in equal force or equal intensity that the lover of educa- 
tion is bound to fight for their retention as one of the leading 
components of our national system. In the first place, Greek 
and Roman thought, Greek and Roman literature, Greek and 
Roman language, Greek and Roman history, lie at the founda- 
tions and enter inseparably into the structure of our own 
thought, literature, language and history. It is a tragic mistake 
to think of them as ancient or dead subjects. The history and 
thought of Greece and Rome are far nearer to us, far more real 
to us, far more modern, than the history and thought of the 
centuries from the second to the sixteenth of our era. They 
are still unexhausted springs of thought and inspiration to-day. 
In the crisis of the last four years, when men were forced back 
on the fundamentals of their nature, how many found comfort, 
wisdom, strength in the literature of Greece in the fifth and 
fourth centuries before Christ, in Aeschylus, in Thucydides, in 
Plato? And how often in the problems of our world-wide 
Empire do we find parallels and warnings in the history of the 
Roman Empire which we could find nowhere else? 

It is difficult to bring home to those who have not thought 
about it the extent to which English language, literature, and 
thought are based upon Greece and Rome, and are unintelligible 
without them. Our philosophy is based upon Plato and Aris- 
totle, and makes a leap thence to Hobbes and Locke; and Plato 
and Aristotle remain unsuperseded by Kant or Hegel, or even 



LATIN AND GREEK 95 

by Nietzsche or James. The whole modern system of law 
(though less in England than in France) is based upon Roman 
law. Our imaginative literature is steeped in the literature of 
Greece and Rome; its forms, its subjects, its thoughts come 
straight thence as though no twenty or thirty centuries lay 
between. Our language is as much Latin as Saxon, and French, 
Italian and Spanish are but Latin modernised. Merely as a 
means to understanding modern languages and literatures a 
widely diffused knowledge of Greek and Latin is indispensable. 

But, apart from the intimate association of classical culture 
with our own, its positive value is so great that any system of 
education which weakened our knowledge and appreciation of 
it would lower the standard and lessen the content of our own 
culture. It is the simple truth, unquestioned by those whose 
range of knowledge qualifies them to judge, that the literature of 
Greece is the finest in the world, though our own may come next 
to it. If any competent critic were drawing up a list of the 
great writers of the world, he could hardly help naming four or 
five Greeks before he named two of any other country. We 
should have to combine the greatest representatives of Eng- 
land, France, Italy, Spain and Germany to make a list which 
would match that which could be produced from Greece alone, 
without calling on the support which Rome could furnish. The 
imaginative intellect of the human race produced its finest flower 
in the Greek race, and the whole tone of our civilisation would 
be lowered if our knowledge of it — intimate only in the case of 
comparatively few in each generation, but conveyed by them 
to the general educated sense of the community in a way that 
would not be possible if Greek and Latin were languages as 
little known as Arabic or Persian — were sensibly weakened or 
confined to a handful of specialists. 

A third aspect in which Greek and Latin are irreplaceable by 
modern studies is the purely linguistic one. It is not necessary 
to depreciate French and German in order to argue that Greek 
and Latin, as subjects of study, give certain elements of mental 
training which no modern language can give. It is not merely 
that Greek is incomparably beautiful, and possesses delicacies 
of style which are themselves a liberal education; for it may 
reasonably be argued that only the elect will appreciate them. 
More important is the fact that, while they convey thoughts 
which are entirely akin to our own methods of thinking, they 



96 SELECTED ARTICLES 

do so in a form of expression so different from ours that our 
minds are exercised to transmute the one into the other. 
Languages such as French or Italian are at once more easy and 
more difficult. They are more easy in that the forms of sen- 
tences and expressions are similar to our own, so that an approx- 
imate translation from one into the other involves little mental 
exertion ; while on the other hand the nuances which differen- 
tiate words apparently identical with ours, and on which idiomatic 
knowledge of the language depends, are hardly to be compre- 
hended by the young student, and almost necessitate a residence 
in the country. Translation from and into Greek and Latin 
is an admirable training in precision of thought and accuracy 
of expression. It requires first of all a clear comprehension 
of the sense of the passage to be translated, and next a selection 
of the correct words by which to convey that sense in another 
tongue. For those who have higher linguistic and stylistic gifts 
there are other benefits to be derived from the practice of 
translation, and much of the best and finest appreciation of 
language and literature is acquired by exercise in prose and 
verse composition ; but this should be reserved for the few and 
not thrust upon all. But for all the practice of simple prose 
translation to and from Greek and Latin is at least as valuable 
an intellectual exercise as the study of algebra or geometry is 
for those who are not going to be expert mathematicians. 

Social and Political Problems 

A fourth consideration which must be touched on is the train- 
ing which Greek and Latin give in social and political problems. 
Modern forms of law and government are derived from those 
of Greece and Rome. The problems of politics and of empire 
that confront us confronted Greece and' Rome, were discussed 
by writers whose grasp of philosophic thought has never been 
surpassed, or were dealt with by the administrators of the one 
empire which in all history most resembles our own in scope 
and character. Moreover, these problems occurred then in more 
simple and less complex forms, and are so far removed from us 
in time that we can study them more clearly and dispassionately 
than those of our own. country and time. Yet they are funda- 
mentally the same. Many a classical scholar during these last 
four years must have thought again and again of historical 
parallels in Thucydides and Demosthenes, and must have had 



LATIN AND GREEK 97 

recourse to the political wisdom of Plato and Aristotle. Many 
of our contemporary public men would deal none the less wisely 
with the problems of to-day if their minds were steeped in the 
wisdom and fortified by the knowledge which is to be found 
in the political and historical literature of Greece and Rome. 
There we find the trials of democracy and of empire, and there 
we watch the example of great men and acute thinkers dealing 
with the elements of the same problems as ourselves. It is a 
storehouse of experience from which we should be extremely 
foolish to cut ourselves off, and which, on the contrary, we 
should do our best to lay open to the classes into whose hands 
the control of our national destinies is now passing. 

Use of Translations 

It is not possible within the limits of a short pamphlet to 
dwell at length on the value of the classics, either as an instru- 
ment of intellectual training or as the depository of indispensable 
information and t moral inspiration. Nor is it necessary. No 
reasonable advocate of natural science or of modern subjects 
denies the value of the classics, any more than the value of 
those subjects is denied by reasonable advocates of the classics. 
The question at issue between them is the possibility of finding 
room for them all in the curriculum, and the extent to which 
one or other must be sacrificed in order to make way for its 
competitors. But at this point it may be as well to touch briefly 
on an argument which is often used, namely, that the essence 
of classical culture can be sufficiently inbibed through the 
medium of translations. There is no need to deny the modicum 
of truth that resides in such a statement. ■ Translations will 
convey much of the actual information contained in classical 
literature, and part at least of the benefits described under the 
fourth head of the above summary may be enjoyed by those who 
cannot read Greek or Latin. But it is only a part, and even this 
part loses something of its force and flavour. So far as it is 
true, it is true also of modern languages. One can learn the 
lessons of French and German history without reading the 
authorities for it in their own tongue. One can even make 
some acquaintance with the genius of Dante or Cervantes 
through translations. Yet no advocate of modern languages 
would accept this as an adequate training in modern European 
culture, even though translations from modern languages are 



98 SELECTED ARTICLES 

usually more adequate, and approach nearer to the tone and 
spirit of their originals than is possible in translations from 
Greek or Latin. And where Greek and Latin are strongest, 
in the expression of ideas, in the conveyance of spiritual in- 
spiration and refreshment, in poetry, in philosophy, in the art of 
literary expression, translations are the least effective. The 
student who reads Plutarch or even Livy in a translation does 
not lose much ; but it is only a poor and inadequate reflection 
that he will obtain from even the best translations of Homer 
and yEschylus, of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Plato and 
Aristotle, of Virgil and Horace and Tacitus. For all except the 
few, like Keats, whose kindred genius inspires them to divine 
the spirit which underlies the distorted form, a very great part 
of the gift which the classics have to bestow is lost. 

Where the art of translation is really helpful is in accelerating 
the progress of the weaker scholar. If a student has once 
mastered the elements of Greek and Latin, his comprehension 
of the greater masters will be much assisted by the use of a 
competent version. Just as a beginner in Italian will make far 
more rapid and easy progress with Dante if he already knows 
Cary's translation, so there are many who could read Thucydides 
or Plato with profit and comprehension if they had Jowett's 
version at hand to help them over difficulties. Similarly, many 
a man who has learnt his classics at school will find it easy 
to keep up his acquaintance with them in later years if he is 
able to glance from time to time at an English version. A 
great service to the classics has been rendered by the production 
of the Loeb series of classical authors, in which the original 
and the translation face one another on opposite pages of 
volumes of convenient size. 

The Discipline of Character 

Before passing on to consider how the essential benefits of 
classical culture can best be preserved for English education, 
one further claim on their behalf cannot be passed over. It is a 
somewhat more contentious topic than those which have hitherto 
been dealt with, but there is no reason why it should not be 
stated with moderation. Experience has shown in the past that 
a classical education is an excellent discipline of character. It is 
to be observed first that a classical education does not mean, as 
controversialists so often represent it to mean, an education 



LATIN AND GREEK 99 

confined to the study of Greek and Latin. A classical education, 
in a good school, has indeed its main staple in the study of these 
languages, but it includes as important subsidiaries a considerable 
amount of "divinity" (Bible study), of history (ancient and 
modern), and of mathematics, and a modicum (possibly a small 
one) of natural science and of modern languages. The proper 
proportions of these subjects is a legitimate topic of discussion, 
and will be referred to later; but it may be claimed for the 
classical education of the past that it trained a boy to be a useful 
member of society, to take an active part in the life of his 
school, and that the leaders of school and university activities 
were usually to be found among the classically trained boys. 
Testimony to this effect has been given by many men who had 
no parti pris in the matter, or whose prepossessions might have 
been expected to lead them to an opposite conclusion ; and quite 
recently some interesting statistics have been published, as the 
result of a comprehensive inquiry in America. Evidence from 
this source is additionally valuable because it can be gleaned 
from a wider range than in England, and because it comes from 
a country where the classics are less securely entrenched in 
tradition, where prejudice is rather against the old ways than 
for them, and where new subjects and new experiments get a 
fair field and ample favour. 

This evidence is contained in a volume by Dr. A. F. West, 
of Princeton University. 1 The main bulk of it is occupied by the 
testimony of several scores of leading men in American life — 
Presidents of the United States, men of business, scholars, 
lawyers, doctors, engineers, science professors, journalists, • 
historians, and writers of various sorts. At the end are a few 
pages of statistics, which are striking even to those whose faith 
in the classics is most profound. The figures are based upon 
returns covering a very wide range of universities. These are 
some of the results : — 

"The Secretary of the College Entrance Examination Board 
has tabulated the comparative records of the classical and the 
non-classical students who took the examinations of the Board 
in the three years 1914, 1915, and 1916. There were 21,103 
candidates." In the non-classical subjects 2.95 per cent of the 
classical candidates obtained a rating of 90 to 100, and 2.05 per 

1 Value of the Classics (Princeton University Press, and H. Milford, 
London, 19 17). 



ioo SELECTED ARTICLES 

cent of the non-classical candidates; 17:31 per cent of the clas- 
sical candidates obtained a rating of 75 to 89, and 12.31 per cent 
of the non-classical candidates. 

"In all but one of the subjects taken by any large number 
of candidates the classical students show a marked superiority 
over the non-classical." 

In reports from 19 high schools and academies and 17 colleges 
and universities, "students receiving High Honors at graduation 
were 18 per cent of all the classical students, but only 7.2 per 
cent of all the non-classical students. . . Students receiving 
Honors or Prizes for Debating, Speaking, or Essay-writing were 
8.8 per cent of all the classical students, but only 3.5 per cent 
of all the non-classical students. . . Students winning Prizes 
or Honors for Scholarship in other than Classical Subjects were 
13.5 per cent of all the classical students, but only 9.3 per cent 
of all the non-classical students." In the institutions from which 
these figures are drawn the non-classical students outnumber the 
classical by over 10 per cent, yet on every basis of comparison 
(and only a few have been quoted above) the classically trained 
men show the better record. It is not necessary to decry other 
subjects, which for many individuals are preferable and have 
their essential place in the community and in the educational 
curriculum; but for the all-round training of the citizen the 
claim of the classics to hold the premier place has not yet been 
shaken. 

Relations With Other Subjects 

If space permitted, it would be easy to collect much testimony 
from men of science, of business, or of commerce to the value 
of a broad humanistic training as a basis for work in quite other 
fields than the classics or literature themselves. But it is time 
to pass on to the further question, how is room to be found 
for the classics as well as for the other subjects which are 
pressing for an increased share in the curriculum; and what 
should be the relation of these subjects to one another? 

On these points satisfactory progress has been made during 
the last few years towards a general basis of agreement. Two 
reports have been issued, containing an account of a series of 
conferences between representatives of all the principal subjects 

1 Education, Scientific and Humane (Murray, 1917, price 6d.), and 
Education, Secondary and University (Murray, 1919, price is.); Both 
prepared by Sir F. G. Kenyon on behalf of the societies concerned. 



LATIN AND GREEK 101 

of secondary education. 1 On the one side was the Education 
Committee of the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies, a 
federation of about sixty scientific organisations, headed by the 
Royal Society; on the other the Council for Humanistic Studies, 
a similar federation of the Classical, English, Geographical, 
Historical and Modern Language Associations and other bodies, 
headed by the British Academy. The results of the conferences 
showed a singularly harmonious effort to fashion a scheme of 
education which would give fair play to all subjects, and en- 
courage the student to make the best use of his faculties. 

A General Curriculum 

The nature of this scheme is best indicated by quoting the 
following series of resolutions : — 

i. The first object in education is the training of human 
beings in mind and character, as citizens of a free country, 
and any technical preparation of boys and girls for a 
particular profession, occupation, or work must be con- 
sistent with this principle. 

2. In all schools in which education is normally continued 
up to or beyond the age of sixteen, and in other schools 
so far as circumstances permit, the curriculum up to 
about the age of sixteen should be general and not special- 
ised; and in this curriculum there should be integrally 
represented English (language and literature), Languages 
and Literatures other than English, History, Geography, 
Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Art and Manual Training. 

3. In the opinion of this Conference both natural science 
and literary subjects should be taught to all pupils below 
the age of sixteen. 

4. In the case of students who stay at school beyond the age 
of sixteen specialisation should be gradual and not 
complete. 

5. In many schools of the older type more time is needed for 
instruction in natural science; and this time can often 
be obtained by economy in the time allotted to classics, 
without detriment to the interests of classical education. 

6. In many other schools more time is needed for instruction 
in languages, history and geography; and it is essential, 
in the interests of sound education, that this time be 
provided. 



102 SELECTED ARTICLES 

7. While it is probably impossible to provide instruction in 
both Latin and Greek in all Secondary Schools, provision 
should be made in every area for teaching in these subjects, 
so that every boy and girl who is qualified to profit from 
them shall have the opportunity of receiving adequate 
instruction in them. 

No Early Specialisation 

The root idea of these resolutions is obvious. It is that up to 
about the age of sixteen education should be general, and that 
this general education should introduce the pupil to all the 
principal branches of knowledge — to his own language, to other 
languages, ancient and modern, to history, to geography, to 
mathematics, to natural science, besides that manual training 
which is useful to all and the one congenial mode of self-expres- 
sion to some. During this- period the aptitudes of the pupil will 
be declaring themselves, and can be studied. At the end of this 
stage his progress will probably be tested by an examination 
(the "First School Examination" recognised by the Board of 
Education), success in which should be accepted as a sufficient 
qualification for entry into a university or to other courses of 
study. After this stage specialisation may begin. The pupil 
will devote more time to the subject for which he has most 
aptitude or which he intends to make his main pursuit at the 
university. But other subjects will not be wholly dropped, and 
some kind of a general education will be maintained up to the 
end of school life. Only at the university will specialisation 
become complete. 

In this way every pupil has a chance of acquiring a broad 
outlook upon life. He is given the keys of many doors, and 
knows something of the treasures which he may expect to find 
behind them. Whatever line of life he may afterwards pursue, 
he has the possibility of sympathizing intelligently with the 
interests of others, and understanding the importance of whole 
classes of knowledge, even though his own knowledge of them 
is small. His mind is not narrowed and his interests limited by 
a premature and excessive specialisation. 

The Provision of Opportunity 

This matter of the provision of opportunity is of great 
importance. It is admirably expressed by a distinguished man 



LATIN AND GREEK 103 

of science, Prof. W. Bateson, in the following words, which 
show a catholic sympathy with all branches of knowledge : — 

"We recognise education in its two scientific aspects, as a 
selective agency, but equally as a provision of opportunity. In 
view, therefore, of the congenital diversity of the individual 
types, that provision should be as diverse and manifold as pos- 
sible, and the very first essential in an adequate scheme of 
education is that to the minds of the young something of every- 
thing should be offered, some part of all the kinds of intellectual 
sustenance, in which the minds of men have grown and rejoiced. 
That should be the ideal. Nothing of varied stimulus or 
attraction that can be offered should be withheld. So only will 
the young mind discover its aptitude and powers. This ideal 
education should bring all into contact with beauty as seen first 
in literature, ancient and modern, with the great models of art 
and the patterns of nobility of thought and of conduct; and no 
less should it show to all the truth of the natural world, the 
changeless systems of the universe, as revealed in astronomy 
or in chemistry, something too of the truth about life, what 
we animals really are, what our place and what our powers, a 
truth ungarbled whether by prudery or mysticism." 1 

Making Room for Other Subjects 

In order that a general education such as has been here out- 
lined may be established, and that full provision of opportunity 
may be accorded in all directions, it is admitted that in most of 
the older secondary schools the time allotted to classics must be 
reduced. This is frankly accepted by many of the keenest advo- 
cates of the classics. Latin and Greek are unquestionably more 
difficult than most other subjects, because they are more wholly 
strange to the beginner; and consequently a fairly generous 
allotment of time must be given to them if any progress worth 
making is to be made. But it is possible to reduce greatly the 
details of grammar (especially the more exceptional details), 
to restrict composition (except the construction of simple sen- 
tences) to those who specialize in classics, to stimulate the 
reading of easy texts, and to assist progress by the aid of 
translations. In this way the pupils in general will have some of 
the interest and some of the linguistic training of the classics 

1 Cambridge Essays on Education, ed. A. C. Benson (Cambridge, 1917). 
P- 132-3- 



104 SELECTED ARTICLES 

put before them. Those who show aptitude for the subject 
will be able to pursue it to its higher levels ; while those who go 
no further will at least have been introduced to interesting 
portions of such authors as Homer, Herodotus, Caesar and 
Cicero, and will have some comprehension of ancient languages 
and ancient history. 

No demand is now made that classics should receive unique 
privileges ; but it is demanded that nothing should be done to 
weight the scales against those who have an aptitude for a form 
of education so effective, so wide-reaching, so rich in capacity 
for forming the character and training the intellect. This 
demand is made not in the interests of the classics (whatever 
that phrase may mean), but in the interests of the nation, which 
cannot afford to lose so valuable an element from its culture. 

A generous rivalry between the different subjects is quite 
another thing. Each should strive to make good its claim to be 
the benefactor of the human species; and as each makes good 
its claim, so will it obtain its share in the curriculum. But to 
grant at once all that eager advocates of the newer subjects claim 
would defeat their own objects. As their wiser representatives 
admit, they have to perfect their methods, to train their teachers, 
to establish the traditions which classics admittedly already 
possess. The Minister of Education has himself recently laid 
stress on the need for gradual expansion on the part of the 
newer subjects: — 

"It must always be remembered that the newer studies suffer 
under an initial disadvantage which it takes some little time to 
correct. Teachers have to be trained, methods have to be 
improved, text-books have to be written, a tradition has to be 
built up before a new study can acquire the educational value 
which belongs to any branch of discipline which has been 
perfected and refined by improvements continued over many 
generations. For this reason I doubt whether Science or Modern 
Languages would be in a position at once to make good use of all 
the school hours which their more extreme advocates demand 
for them. We cannot, in other words, leave altogether out of 
sight the existing qualifications of the men and women who are 
teaching in the schools, or beneficially correct the balance of 
studies in the curriculum of our schools unless we are prepared 
to give to every study only so much time as it can profitably 
use." 1 

1 Letter read at a meeting of the five Humanistic Associations, January 
9, 1919. 



LATIN AND GREEK 105 

Fair Play For Classics 

What then is needed in order to bring about the result we 
desire? First, such modifications in the examinations for 
scholarships at the Universities as will remove the temptation 
to excessive specialisation at schools. Next, a willingness on 
the part of the friends of classics to make economies of time in 
order to allow room for other subjects. Thirdly, a willingness 
on the part of advocates of other subjects to allow fair play to 
classics. So far as the making of economies is concerned, a 
committee of the Classical Association is now sitting to consider 
how they can best be effected in the case of Greek. But there 
is another side to this question, which has not yet been touched 
on, and raises in an acute form the claim of fair play for 
classics. In the controversies with regard to classics the dispu- 
tants have almost invariably had in mind the public schools in 
which classics are firmly and even predominantly established. 
But there is a far larger class of secondary schools in which 
classics lead a very precarious existence. In. the municipal and 
other secondary schools throughout the country, in which an 
increasing proportion of the population will in future be educated, 
. the proportions existing in the older schools are completely 
reversed. Science is here entrenched and protected by compul- 
sion and encouraged by public opinion. Latin, and still more 
Greek, are regarded as ornamental and probably useless 
excrescences. 

In schools such as these the need is to claim for the pupils 
who attend them an element of culture to which they are entitled 
and which they are in danger of losing. Greek and Latin being 
what we have, seen them to be, the foundation and inspiration of 
all our modern culture, and possessing what we have seen them 
to possess, a good half of the finest literature of the world, they 
should not remain the special preserve of one social class in the 
community. The classics, and especially Greek, should be the 
possession, not of the social aristocracy of the country but of the 
intellectual aristocracy. There is no reason why this intellectual 
aristocracy should. be confined to the comparatively wealthy. It 



106 SELECTED ARTICLES 

is for the working classes, now that they are rising to fuller 
power and more articulate expression, to claim their right of 
access to this mine of intellectual wealth. 

The Claim of the Working Classes 

Fortunately there are signs that they will do so. At a recent 
deputation to the President of the Board of Education, 1 Mr. 
A. Mansbridge, the founder and inspirer of that excellent move- 
ment, the Workers' Educational Association, used the following 
words : — 

"Working people are displaying an increasing interest in such 
subjects as Greek Democracy and Greek Moral Political 
Thought. . . It is not too much to say that there are to-day 
many working people in all parts of the country who associate 
the name of Greece with the cause of humanism, and who eagerly 
seize every opportunity of extending their acquaintance with 
classical civilisation." Of proposals which would confine the 
knowledge of Greek to the well-to-do he said, "That obviously 
would be an injustice which working men and women, developing 
as they are in appreciation of education, would not tolerate for 
one moment. . . I should like to see a redistribution of the 
opportunities for classical studies. . . I do not wish scholar- 
ship to be confined to those who are able to give their lives to it; 
I want men engaged in all occupations to have the opportunity 
of developing it. I hope the day may come when a working man 
may be able to enjoy Homer in the original, and excite no more 
comment than his enjoyment of Shakespeare does now. Why 
should it?" 

This is no fantastic ideal, but one that comes well within the 
range of such a reconstruction of our national life as we are 
now contemplating. What is required is that in every educa- 
tional area there should be facilities for the learning of Latin 
and Greek, and that boys and girls who show signs of linguistic 
capacity and literary taste should have these gifts encouraged. 
For those who have them it is no very great or hard matter to 
acquire such a knowledge of Greek as may enable them to enjoy 
the easier authors after a two years' course of study, and even 
the harder ones with the aid of a translation.^ A committee of 

1 On April 27, 1917. Reported in full in the Proceedings of the 
Classical Association, Vol. XV., p. 5-40. 



LATIN AND GREEK 107 

the Classical Association has just been engaged in drafting 
such a course. 

Modern intellectual civilisation owes its rise to the recovery 
of Greek literature at the Renaissance. It would be tragic if, 
at the moment when the nation has risen to the height of its 
great ordeal in virtue of its maintenance of those high spiritual 
ideals which ancient literature does so much to foster, it should 
put out of its life the source and mainspring of its intellectual 
inspiration. The classics are a heritage to be cherished, not 
to the exclusion of other worthy and necessary subjects, but as 
an essential element with them in the full culture on which a 
noble national life can be nurtured and maintained. 



THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF LATIN AND 
GREEK 1 

In the gray dawn of history Parmenides, a Greek, wrote a 
philosophical poem which he divided into two parts. The first 
part was dedicated to truth, the second to opinion. No more 
fruitful division of human notions has ever been devised than 
this of the early Greek thinker. 

A small realm in which matters are settled unalterably, where 
disputes can no longer rage, where we must conform to the 
! f acts and gain much by doing so, this small realm is that of the 
truth, for which "brows have ached and souls toiled and striven." 
It is so precious that even a counterfeit of it is valuable. Its 
faculty of settling disputes is such an economy that we delegate 
that power to men of all sorts, clothe them with a specious in- 
fallibility and say to them, "Decide, in order that delay and hesi- 
tation may cease. Better progress in the wrong direction than no 
progress at all. Better graft than anarchy." In this way we 
have doubtless enthroned more error than we have discovered 
truth, but the economy justifies the method in most cases. 

An enormous realm in which affairs are not settled but in 
constant change, where disputes rage and the individual's gain 
is proportional to his vociferation, where every one who can do 

1 Prof. Lawrence W. Cole, Director of the School of Social and Home 
Service, University of Colorado. University of Colorado Bulletin. 14:9-15. 
September, 19 14. 



108 . SELECTED ARTICLES 

so must take more than he is entitled to, must "stake out" more 
land than he can possibly cultivate lest the turn of the tide 
wash much of it away, where one conforms chiefly to his own 
desires and the appeal is to "man's unconquerable soul"; this 
is the realm of opinion and many of the most important human 
concerns belong to this realm. Opinion, however, does two 
good things. It breeds first partisans, then experiments. 
Credimus experto. 

Education being an important human concern, no question 
concerning it can finally escape either stage of this evolution 
from opinion to truth. Every item of educational opinion will 
first divide men into two parties. If the problem can be factored 
into its elements each elementary question can usually be 
promptly tested by experiment and from the result of such 
analytical experiments there is no escape. Their results are true. 

If the problem can not be factored the partisans themselves 
become the experimenters. This is unfortunate, for a partisan 
is not likely to weigh all the evidence justly. There is, however, 
no escape from experimenting. Courses of study are framed 
in the light of the framers' opinions. If they are men in 
authority, even methods of teaching must conform to their rules, 
and all this continues until time brings a change in the school 
administration, for a partisan rarely changes his mind. We 
must admit, however, that as long as educators and the public 
hold opinions school instruction must be a series of wholesale, 
social experiments ; wholesale in the sense that problems are not 
attacked by analysis or piecemeal, but that you must judge a 
method or a study by its total results or its statistical outcome ; 
and too frequently no statistics are kept, not even the intel- 
lectual death rate. 

The steps or stages from opinion to truth are, therefore, three : 

(a) Partisanship of a platform or theory; 

(b)- Wholesale experiment with a possible statistical result; 

(c) Analytical experiment in which each factor is studied 
separately. 

I. The partisans of Latin and Greek have urged that these 
subjects are excellent disciplines of a "liberal education and a 
splendid preparation for professional and technical training. 

The opposite party has claimed either that there is no such 
thing as discipline or that one study is quite as good as another 
for mental training. Therefore, no attention need be paid to 



LATIN AND GREEK 109 

discipline; and for information, the classics should be read in 
translation. 

In this state of opinion the only course possible is to examine 
the competence and credibility of the witnesses. If my sources 
of information are correct, Lord Kelvin, 1 Karl Pearson, John 
Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Bryce, Lowell, Barrett Wendell, 
Professor Grandgent, Brunetiere and Anatole France, all believe 
in the classics as a training for the scholar. I omit all who are 
professionally interested in Latin and Greek, even the great 
Jebb and Jowett. 

Just as sincere partisans on the other side are Descartes, Her- 
bert Spencer, David Starr Jordan, and Stanley Hall. Here I 
omit the names of persons professionally interested in some new 
subject to displace the classics. 

So far as disinterested opinion goes, therefore, there is a 
clear balance in favor of the boy's studying Latin and Greek 
An high school as a preparation for the future work. Those who 
recommend such study are scholars of the first rank. 

2. Relative to Greek and Latin, however, we have made a 
wholesale experiment. With the introduction of the newer 
studies and elective courses in high schools we changed from 
classical training and we may now compare the result of the 
new with the old. For the purpose of this comparison, let me 
quote professors Wendell and Grandgent. None are better 
observers and none have had better opportunity to compare the 
two conditions. 

Professor Wendell 2 writes as follows : — 

"It seems to me, as the newer educational notions have sup- 
planted the elder at schools which fit boys for college, those boys 
prove, when they get to college, flabbier and flabbier in mind." 

"A satisfactorily educated man distinguishes himself from an 
uneducated one chiefly because, for general purposes, his 
faculties are better under his control. An educated man, in 
short, when confronted with new or unexpected problems can 
generally use his wits better than an uneducated one. Here we 
are on purely practical ground. The simple question becomes 
one of plain fact, not of prejudice. What kind of education 
makes people most frequently efficient for general purposes? 

1 See Shorey, Paul. The Case for the Classics. . The School Review. 
Volume XVIII, 1900. 

2 Wendell, Barrett. Our National Superstition. North Amer. Rev., Vol- 
ume CLXXIX, 1904, page 388 ff. 



no SELECTED ARTICLES 

Honestly answering this, though I am myself a professor of a 
radical and practical subject, I am bound to say that purely 
practical considerations go far to justify the old system of 
classics and mathematics in comparison with anything newer." 

This is the verdict of a professor of English, after twenty 
years' observation of the "elective" and "no-classics" regime. 

Professor Grandgent, 1 who has charge of Romance Languages 
and has had an equal opportunity to observe the experiment is 
more emphatic than Professor Wendell. He calls the present 
the "dark ages" of scholarship, and writes thus : — 

"Another prevalent fallacy, which has found favor even in 
high quarters, is the belief that for the training of the young, 
one subject is just as good as another. This is surely on the 
face of it an amazing doctrine to promulgate : it runs counter 
to all traditional and, so far as I am aware, to all contemporary 
experience. One would think the burden of proof should rest 
on its confessors. Yet they have offered not a shred of evidence 
— nothing but bald assertion. And on the basis of this empty 
vociferation school programs and college admission requirements 
are overturned. Perhaps, our age has furnished no better 
example than this of its sheeplike sequacity. We, here present, 
are nearly all of us teachers, and as competent as anybody to 
testify in this case ; and I venture to say there is not one among 
us who has not observed, in students who have pursued widely 
different studies, a corresponding difference in general aptitude. 
It does not stand to reason that algebra should develop the 
same faculties as free-hand drawing, or Greek the same as black- 
smithing. Problably the greatest divergence in the educational 
value of studies is due to the varying degree to which they 
require concentration, judgment, observation, and imagination. 
Some occupations can be pursued with tolerable success while 
the mind is wandering; others, like arithmetic and algebra, 
demand close and constant attention. Some can be carried on 
by an almost mechanical process, others, like Greek and Latin, 
call for continual reasoning and the application of general 
principles to particular cases. Some exact little of the mind 
but much of the eye." 

"The fallacy just defined is closely related to another which 
it has used to support : namely, the doctrine that all study must 

1 Grandgent, C. H. The Dark Ages. Pub. Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer., 
Volume XXVIII, 1913- 



LATIN AND GREEK in 

be made agreeable to the student. More and more the difficult 
subjects have been replaced by easier ones, and these have been 
made easier yet by the extraction of obstacles and the invention 
of painless methods. Grammarless modern languages, delatin- 
ized Latin, simplified mathematics omit the very features that 
make study valuable. Predigested foods of all sorts have almost 
deprived our youth of the power to use their teeth." 

Add to these observations the fact that many professors of 
physics and chemistry prefer that their students should not have 
studied those subjects in high school, but would rather they 
had studied Latin and Greek. 

Again the Department of English of Harvard University has 
been importuned for years to set a requirement for admission 
called "Advanced English," which should be equivalent to the 
'high-school training in Latin and Greek. This the professors 
have refused to do because no study of English could be made 
the equivalent of classical study as a preparation for students 
of English. 

The University of California begs the high schools to offer 
Greek to prospective students of English because they too can 
find no substitute for it. 

Physicians who have no knowledge of Greek urge medical 
students to elect that language for the sake of understanding 
medical and scientific terms. 

May I add my own impressions to all this testimony? It is 
my duty to teach the elements of psychology to large classes of 
sophomores in college. Despite many simple experiments and 
the newer methods of instruction, the subject is still somewhat 
abstract. I can not transfix the mind on a dissecting needle and 
pass it around for inspection as one might a cockroach or a 
butterfly. Consequently, students find that the subject does not 
disclose its secrets without considerable study. 

The difficulty, so far as I can define it, lies in this. Besides 
learning to see objects, the student must learn to make nice but 
definite discriminations, must form certain general notions, and 
must, above all things, learn to detect relations. Now analysis, 
generalization, and relational thinking are developed and trained 
above all things else by the study of Latin and Greek. For 
this reason, your classicist is always an educated man. He 
finds in psychology a subject both of training and information, 
and he promptly goes to the deeper levels of that information, 



112 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Others obtain as much information from the subject as their 
previous training and their industry permit. 

One more wholesale experiment may be mentioned. The 
Germans, quite untroubled by our elective courses and disputes, 
demand six hours per week of Greek for six years, and almost 
twice as much Latin in their gymnasium courses. The Latin 
is required even in the real-gymnasia. 1 

The collective experiments of twenty years with elective 
courses and the newer subjects of instruction have not produced 
as good results as the instruction of the period just preceding. 
Consequently, the elective course has been dropped everywhere, 
and especially in the high schools. Almost every claim made 
in its favor proved false. The evidence I have reviewed shows, 
I think, that high-school students would be immensely benefited 
by a return to the study of Latin and Greek. These studies 
were condemned for the sake of the elective course. That having 
failed disastrously, the classics should now be tried on their 
merits. 

3. Is the claim true or false that Latin and Greek afford intel- 
lectual discipline? Not analytical experiments but group experi- 
ments have tried to answer this question, and with varying 
results. For centuries plain men and scholars believed in the 
existence of such a thing as intellectual discipline. They thought 
they observed the decay of mental powers when they were not 
used. The visual region of Laura Bridgeman's brain had within 
it millions of undeveloped cells. It seemed reasonable to sup- 
pose that the similar undeveloped cells to be found in all brains 
might be due in turn to the absence of stimuli, the lack of 
cultivation. 

However, the first group-experiments designed to measure 
the effect of discipline and the amount of its transfer failed to 
find transfer. Hence transfer was denied and the existence of 
such a thing as discipline gravely doubted. 

Soon the experiments were seized upon by writers on educa- 
tion and made to bolster up the doctrine of interest, or any 
other theory or fad in which the writers might believe. 

Now we know that the wrong conclusion was drawn from 
the experiments. The conclusion should have been not that 
transfer does not occur, but that the method used was too crude 

1 Lexis, W. History and Organization of Public Education in the Ger- 
man Empire. Berlin, 1904. P a S e 56- 



LATIN AND GREEK 113 

to detect it. Careful individual experiments have recently been 
made and Ebert and Meumann, 1 Coover and Angell, 2 Winch, 3 
Bennett/ Fracker 5 and others have found transfer of discipline 
in marked degree. The doctrine of "no-transfer" is exploded 6 
and if its former advocates do not admit the explosion openly 
they do so tacitly in their recent writings. 

There is positive transfer, i. e., increase of one mental ability 
by training another, and in some cases, negative transfer, or 
decrease in some ability due to long exercise of others, and this, 
I believe, was exactly the opinion held by sensible men before the 
cry of "no-transfer" was raised. Once it was raised it was used 
to bolster up the most extravagant claims of all sorts of 
educators. One teacher of education denied even the fact of 
training of special mental powers by their own exercise. It was 
all a beautiful example of loading the negative results of hasty 
group experiments with positive conclusions, for which "scientific 
accuracy" was claimed. 

The claims of Latin and Greek rest so much on a belief in 
their disciplinary value that the "no-transfer" propaganda was 
almost the last nail in the coffin of the classics. The worst effect 
is that discipline has no longer been aimed at in high schools, 
by either teachers or pupils. The course of study has as often 
been a melange of novelties as a group of subjects whose mastery 
required industry. Little wonder that Professor Grandgent 
calls our educational present "The Dark Ages." 

1 Archiv. f .d. gesamte Psychologie. IV, 1904. 
2 Amer. J. of Psych. XVIII, 1907. 

3 Winch, W. H. Brit. J. of Psych. II, 1908. 

4 Bennett, C. J. Formal Discipline, N. Y. 1907. 

5 Fracker, G. C. Psych. Rev. Monog. Supp. IX, 1907. 

6 Recently British psychologists have renewed the attack on the problem 
and with refined mathematical methods. All but one of the investigators 
find a greater per cent of correlation than can be ascribed to chance or 
error. Moreover, the correlations arrange themselves in a hierarchy, thus 
giving evidence, the authors say, of a "common fund of energy" or gen- 
eral intelligence which may be exercised in a variety of types of mental 
work. This is a startling return to an old belief. Yet it must still be 
emphasized that neither the experimental method used in testing for cor- 
relation nor the mathematical treatment of the results is well enough 
established to justify its use as a foundation for educational dogma. To 
this opinion the British investigators subscribe. But if the method is 
still not adequately verified, what shall we say of the crude experiments 
of fifteen years ago? Their use suggests vividly the remark of Hodgson: 
"Whatever you are totally ignorant of assert to be the explanation of 
everything else." This is, of course, quackery in education, as it was 
in philosophy, but the quackery has worked too well. We surely need 
to discriminate between the educational mountebank and the expert in 
education. In the present state of our knowledge the latter is characterized 
by the fact that he, first of all, avoids doing great harm. 



114 SELECTED ARTICLES 

BRIEF EXCERPTS 

All the available information shows that the classical gen- 
erally surpass the non-classical students in school and college 
studies. Andrew F. West, The Value of the Classics, p. ij. 

Of Latin derivation are from 60 to 75 per cent of all the 
words in an unabridged English dictionary. Why the full Latin 
requirements should be kept, p. 8. 

It seems quite safe to predict that no culture will ever be 
considered broad and deep unless it rests upon an understanding 
and appreciation of the civilizations of Greece and Rome. 
Nicholas Murray Butler, The Meaning of Education, p. 173. 

Latin still constitutes the most thoroughly ordered and 
synthesized body of knowledge in the modern world, and hence 
the best of all known studies for building an ordered mind. 
W. H. P. Faunce, Practical Value of Latin, p. 31. 

The thorough investigation of the New Testament in its 
history and meaning must forever rest on a knowledge of the 
Greek language. William D. McKensie, Practical Value of 
Latin, p. 16. 

A sober reflection on the history of the ancient republics 
might put us on guard against many of the dangers to which 
we ourselves are exposed. Irving Babbitt, Literature and the 
American College, p. 171. 

I am most thoroughly in favor of Classical studies, and my 
opinion is based not only upon my own experience but upon 
the general history of education. John Grier Hibben, Practical 
Value of Latin, p. 30. 

So far as our experience has gone, we have not discovered 
a means for the development of intellectual maturity comparable 
with the study of Latin and Greek. Rush Rhees, Practical 
Value of Latin, p. 30. 



LATIN AND GREEK 115 

The principal function of education, as it seems to many 
thinking people, is so to train the youth that they may find in 
their minds and in their tastes a perennial source of satisfaction 
and enjoyment. Classical Weekly (editorial) 3:121, Feb. 12, 
1910. 

Nothing but a tolerable familiarity with Latin roots can 
prevent stupid misuse of words derived from Latin. History 
and common sense combine to make Latin the only sound 
foundation of literary English. Barrett Wendell, The Relation 
of Latin to Practical Life, p. 30. 

Latin and Greek are the sub-structure not only of most 
words we use, but that also classical literature contains the 
basic principles of philosophy, law, science, history, and, in 
.short, of civilization itself. Editorial, Buffalo Times, July 12, 
1920. 

No student can go far in the study of any Romance language 
without a knowledge of Latin. There is very little Romance 
literature whose full flavor can be perceived and relished by 
the student who knows neither Latin nor Greek. Caroline S. 
Sheldon, Outlook 107:288 June 6, 1914. 

Among the advocates of classical studies have been nearly 
all the great critics of the nineteenth century, from Goethe, 
Coleridge and Sainte-Beuve to Brunetiere, Anatole France, Le- 
maitre, Faguet, Doumic, Lowell, and Arnold. Paul Shorey, 
Atlantic Monthly 119:799 June 1917. 

For the mass of English speaking men, rare spirits excepted, 
the best use of English is not attained without knowing the 
sources whence our mother tongue draws its life. Nearly half 
if it is Latin. The better we know Latin, then, the better our 
use of English. Dean Andrew F. West, The Value of the 
Classics, p. 29. 

A mastery of the literature and the history of the ancient 
world makes everyone fitter to excel than he would have been 



u6 SELECTED ARTICLES 

without it, for it widens the horizon, it sets standards unlike our 
own, it sharpens the edge of critical discrimination, it suggests 
new lines of constructive thought. James Bryce, Practical Value 
of Latin, p. 21. 

In addition to the mental discipline which study of them (the 
ancient classics) affords, they are the most helpful in the matter 
of correct English style, in laying sound foundations for gram- 
matical construction, and in furnishing a basis for the study 
of all Modern Languages. William H. Taft, Practical Value 
of Latin, p. 21. 

Modern customs are so directly the outgrowth of ancient 
ones, and modern politics and philosophy so intimately connected 
with the spirit of the Greek and the Roman, that there is no 
adequate appreciation of the one without some more or less 
familiar knowledge of the other. Edward P. Davis, Education 
32:55 Sept. 191 1. 

Much of our law comes from the Roman times and so 
many of our legal maxims are phrased in the Latin language 
that to a lawyer a knowledge of Latin is peculiarly important and 
helpful. Greek has been of more value to me by reason of the 
training it gave me in a proper interpretation of words and 
phrases than in the practical use of the language itself. A 
Mitchell Palmer, Practical Value of Latin, p. 20. 

Latin literature furnishes the supreme model for a straight- 
forward, concise and logical style. It teaches any appreciative 
student close thinking and direct expression. Greek civilization 
is the source of love for beauty and refinement. I believe that 
only when equipped with some knowledge and recollection of 
the Classics can a good editor do his best work. Ellery Sedg- 
wick, Practical Value of Latin, p. 24. 

A good knowledge of the English language requires a fair 
understanding of Greek, but not of French or German. Com- 
pound words, new and old, come from the Greek. The new 
words of science and medicine are Greek. One who knows 



LATIN AND GREEK 117 

Greek does not need to look them out in the dictionary to find 
that the Appendix has not yet discovered them. Independent 
{editorial) 35:1009, Aug. 9, 1883. 

Every public high school and academy in the country, 
practically without exception, offers instruction in it; and 
according to the general testimony of the school examiners 
who are sent out by the large universities to pass upon the 
quality of instruction given in the several subjects accepted for 
admission to college, Latin and mathematics are the two subjects 
in which the instruction is most likely to be found satisfactory. 
Andrew F. West, The Value of the Classics, p. 360. 

Biological chemistry is practically written in the Greek 
language. The language of botany is essentially Latin in so far 
as the names of fhe plants are concerned, and Greek in the 
names which deal with the anatomy of the plants and their 
organs. The language of mathematics is largely Greek — the 
language of medicine, Greek and Latin combined. The common 
language of the home is largely Latin and Greek. Dr. Harvey 
W. Wiley, Practical Value of Latin, p. 26. 

The foes of the classics have been the most enthusiastic 
advocates of thorough instruction in English. It is as clear as 
day that the most exhaustive study of English must be deficient 
if it is not based on some knowledge of Latin and Greek. No 
persistent work in English can supply this want, and there must 
be many a blank space or hiatus in the knowledge of the English 
scholar whose training is in English alone. Cleveland Plain 
Dealer, {editorial) June 6, 1917. 

Careful daily translation develops a fine feeling for syno- 
nyms and requires the exercise of good judgment and taste in 
their selection. It causes the pupil to acquire a sense for form 
and style, and trains him to express himself with clearness and 
precision. By reason of their inherent differences in thought- 
forms from our own tongue, the classical languages serve these 
ends to an unusual degree of efficiency. Edward P. Davis, 
Education 32:54 Sept. 1911. 



u8 SELECTED ARTICLES 

I have taught law in four different Law Schools and, with 
some care and much interest, have looked into the pre-legal 
education of students in each of the Schools wherein I have 
taught. What I have learned in this way has produced a strong 
impression that students who come to the Law School with a 
good linguistic training, especially those who have had good 
training in the Classics, other things being equal, have an 
advantage and do better work from the beginning. Roscoe 
Pound, Practical Value of Latin, p. g. 

What is tremendously significant is the discovery by the 
faculties of our colleges and universities that a Greekless and all 
but Latinless generation of students is not equipped to enter 
fully and thoroughly into the heritage of civilization as it is 
handed on through the various departments of higher education. 
There is no doubt that this disquieting experience has already 
brought about a reaction of sentiment in the college world in 
favor of Greek and Latin. George Norlin, University of 
Colorado Bulletin 14:5, Sept. 1914. 

The study of Latin and Greek contributes to the student's 
command of English thru the enlargement of his vocabulary, 
and the enrichment of it in synonyms expressing the finer 
shades of meaning; thru his acquaintance with the original or 
underlying meanings of words, thru his familiarity with the 
principles of word formation, and thru the insight into the 
structure of the English language afforded by a mastery of 
the Latin. Francis W. Kelsey, Educational Review 33 :65 
Jan. 1907. 

The average high school graduate who has studied no other 
language than English cannot even understand literary English, 
much less use it. He does not know the meaning of the words, 
though they define themselves upon their faces to those who 
have had a very little knowledge of the foundation tongues. I 
do not mean the nomenclature of botany and faunal naturalism 
and anatomy, of psychology and physical science, though these 
are easy to one who knows a little Greek. I mean ordinary 
words one floor above the street. Frederick Irland, Atlantic 
Monthly 124:48 July 1919. 



LATIN AND GREEK 119 

What you cannot find a substitute for is the Classics as 
literature; and there can be no first hand contact with that 
literature if you will not master the grammar and the syntax 
which convey its subtle power. Your enlightenment depends 
on the company you keep. You do not know the world until 
you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares 
before you were ever given your brief run upon it. And there 
is no sanity comparable with that which is schooled in the 
thoughts that will keep. Woodrow Wilson, Practical Value of 
Latin, p. 20-21. 

Latin and Greek become effective as educational instruments 
in at least seven different ways : By training in the essentials 
of scientific methods — observation, comparison, generalization; 
By making our own language intelligible and developing the 
power of expression; By bringing the mind into contact with 
literature in elemental forms; By giving insight into a basic 
civilization; By cultivating the constructive imagination; By 
clarifying moral ideals, and stimulating to right conduct; By 
furnishing means of recreation. Francis W. Kelsey, Educational 
Review 33 162-3 Jan. 1907. 

The question whether the study of the Classics is intrin- 
sically good is one to be settled by experts, and the testimony 
of the greatest experts is that the Classics form one of the 
finest intellectual disciplines known. in the history of education. 
On no other supposition is it possible to explain the cold, hard 
fact that students taking Classics are on the whole intellectually 
superior to the others. It makes no difference whether this is 
attributed to custom or not, because the fact that it is the 
custom for the more intellectual students to study Classics is 
merely an argument in favor of the Classics. Andrew F. West, 
Practical Value of Latin, p. 31. 

Classical secondary education lays a broad and sure founda- 
tion for subsequent special courses and fits the recipient to take 
his place with credit as well in the professional and technical 
schools, as in the great world of business, and this after the 
most approved fashion. It makes youth equal to the duties of 
their time and station, while infusing into them the stamina 



120 SELECTED ARTICLES 

to share fully in its responsibilities. To elevate character, to 
ennoble ideals, to secure and ensure happiness, to give sources 
of influence is its main purpose. The scholarly refinement that 
is its fruit adds a zest and a charm to life. Rev. F. X. Reilly, 
S. J. St. Mary's College Bulletin 12:9-10 Jan. 1916. 

Latin and Greek are not dead languages, because they still 
convey living thoughts. The real success of a democracy — 
the production of a finer manhood — depends less upon mechanics 
than upon morale. For that the teachings of the classics are 
excellent. They have a bracing and a steadying quality. They 
instill a sense of order and they inspire a sense of admiration, 
both of which are needed by the people — especially the plain 
people — of a sane democracy. The classics are fresher, younger, 
more vital and encouraging, than most modern books. They 
have lessons for us to-day — believe me — great words for the 
present crisis and the pressing duty of the hour. Henry Van 
Dyke, Outlook 120:411 Nov. 13, 1918. 

It is with feelings of gratitude that I recall the day of 
classical study with its rigorous discipline. The most of my 
preparation for my life-work was with mathematics, Greek, 
and Latin, and, although I fear that I could not place an 
algebraic equation upon the board or conjugate a Greek verb 
or give correctly the declension of a Latin noun, yet I am 
confident that the result of that study has been appreciable 
through all these years, and that nothing could have given me 
equal mental discipline and power. 

As a time-saver and as a sure road to the topmost round of 
all things that require strong, critical, and clear thinking, I 
would urge the patient and untiring study of the Greek and 
Latin languages. This is not the only road, but it is the best 
one. James R. Day, Outlook 107:957 Aug. 22, 1914. 

It becomes, therefore, a very serious question what the 
educational instrumentalities shall be that are to provide the 
next generation or two with the sort of discipline and training 
that Greek, Latin, and mathematics provided for our fathers 
and for many of us. The vague discussion of what are called 
social questions will not discipline or train anyone. If history 
be regarded as something quite independent of chronology and 



LATIN AND GREEK 121 

as recording merely the results of the operation of economic 
law, then it, too, will become of little or no educational value. 
Those who empty out of philosophy its ancient and honorable 
content, and try to substitute for it a sort of checkered pave- 
ment of the sciences, are engaged in agile exercise, but they 
are not accomplishing any good either for philosophy or for 
education. Nicholas Murray Butler, Educational Review 54:178 
Sept. 1917. 

The most effective means for acquiring a broad and thorough 
cultivation of the mental faculties which is the aim of all true 
education and the best foundation for special and professional 
training, is recognized to be the full and accurate study of the 
Latin and Greek classics. In connection with these, a thorough 
training, is recognized to be the full and accurate study of the 
literature, together with a comparative study of the English 
language and literature, is essential. 

The analytical study of language and letters promotes exact- 
ness of thought, delicacy of perception and facility of expression, 
by the constant and keen exercise of judgment and taste, as well 
as of the reasoning powers. In this regard, the languages of 
ancient Rome and Greece, when intelligently and seriously 
studied, offer greater advantages than any other. They are also 
most helpful to the knowledge of our mother tongue. Their 
structure and idiom, so remote from the language of the student, 
reveal to him the laws of thought and logic and demand reflec- 
tion and analysis of the fundamental relations between ideas 
and expression ; they exercise him in exactness of conception in 
grasping the author's meaning and in clearness and delicacy of 
expression in clothing that thought in the very dissimilar garb 
of his own native tongue. Canisius College Catalogue 1919-20, 
p. 26. 

. . . Thousands of people have testified to the fact that 
not until they had studied a second language did English gram- 
mar become clear to them. And the second language should by 
all means be Latin, partly because of the completeness of its 
grammatical apparatus, but chiefly because the native English 
sentence was first made orderly, logical, serviceable, and efficient 
under the influence of the grammar of Latin . . . The 
management of clauses, for instance, of tense sequence, of 



122 SELECTED ARTICLES 

indirect discourse, of linking apparatus, of position and preposi- 
tion — so troublesome in writing English— is learned from Latin 
as a matter of necessity ; it is seldom learned thoroughly through 
English alone, as any journalist can testify or illustrate. . . 
The student of English, devoid of Latin and Greek, must 
pick and choose his reading with great care if he would maintain 
his interest for long. . . He will find whole periods of 
English prose impossible and much of English verse beyond 
his imaginative reach. He must confine himself to the con- 
temporaneous, and often suffer the feeling of detachment even 
there. He is debarred from real intellectual sympathy with no 
inconsiderable portion of nineteenth century prose and verse — 
to mention only the more familiar names, with portions of 
Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, the Arnolds, the Brownings, 
the Morris, Landor, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Tennyson, Words- 
worth, Macaulay, Newman, George Eliot, Ruskin, Rossetti, Pater, 
and even Tom Moore. Joseph V. Denney, Practical Value of 
Latin, p. 32-3. 

It is to be feared that a degenerating process has been 
long going on in our own vernacular tongue. There is danger 
that it will become the dialect of conceits, of pettinesses, of 
dashing coxcombry, or of affected strength and of extravagant 
metaphor. Preachers as well as writers appear to regard convul- 
sive force as the only quality of a good style. They seem to 
imagine that the human heart is, in all its moods, to be carried 
by storm. Their aim is the production of immediate practical 
effect. Hence there is a struggle for the boldest figure and the 
most passionate oratory. The same tendency is seen in the hall 
of legislation, and pre-eminently in much of our popular liter- 
ature. Passion, over-statement, rediculous conceits, the introduc- 
tion of terms that have no citizenship in any language on earth, 
a disregard of grammar, an affected smartness, characterize 
to a very melancholy degree our recent literature. To be 
natural is to be antiquated. To use correct and elegant English 
is to plod. Hesitancy in respect to the adoption of some new- 
fangled word is the sure sign of a purist. Such writers as 
Addison and Swift are not to be mentioned in the ears of our 
"enterprising" age. The man or the woman who should be 
caught reading the Spectator would be looked upon as smitted 
with lunacy. In short there is reason to fear that our noble 



LATIN AND GREEK 123 

old tongue is changing into a dialect for traffickers, magazine 
writers, and bedlamites. 

One way by which this acknowledged evil may be stayed 
is to return to such books as Milton, Dryden, and Cowper loved, 
to such as breathed their spirit into the best literature of Eng- 
land, to the old historians and poets that were pondered over 
from youth to hoary years by her noblest divines, philosophers, 
and statesmen. Eloquence, both secular and sacred, such as 
the English world has never listened to elsewhere, has flowed 
from minds that were imbued with classical learning. Sears, 
Edwards, and Felton, Classical Studies, p. xvii-iii. 

Modern educators agree that, while training the mind in 
one direction means, first of all, training it in that direction 
and not in some other, transfer from one field to another is 
possible whenever there are "identical elements." ' The identity 
may be of two kinds: (1) identity of content (substance) — 
as when a knowledge of mathematics is carried over to physics ; 
(2) identity of form (method or procedure) — as when the 
mode of attack used in one language is applied to the study 
of another language. Under the second heading may be classed 
general methods of technique in learning: devices of grouping 
and rhythm which help in memorizing; ways of applying the 
attention and invoking the aid of association ; and the essentials 
of the reasoning process, which may be transferred from one 
body of facts to facts in a wholly unrelated field. 

Theoretically, any subject properly taught should have a 
broadening effect upon the student's general experience. But 
in actual practice, some subjects are much better adapted than 
others, in both subject-matter and method, to general training. 
E. H. Henderson, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, 
Adelphi College, states {Principles of Education, p. 300) : — 
"Training in method is most economical and most effective 
when it is given in connection with content the mastery of 
which is in itself valuable." An article in The Pedagogical 
Seminary for 1914, by C. K. Lyans of Clark University, points 
out the need of vitality in school work, and then adds that the 
work should also be difficult. "One who has in his school 
career never done anything disagreeable," says Lyans, "who 
has never had to study until he has gained his 'second breath,' 
has missed one of the most valuable results of an education. 



124 SELECTED ARTICLES 

All the studies of the learning process, as well as universal 
experience, prove that it is hard and intense work that edu- 
cates." (pp. 387-388). C. H. Judd, Director of the School of 
Education, University of Chicago, who certainly can not be 
accused of being a partisan of the classics, declares (Psy- 
chology of High School Subjects, pp. 424-425) : "The older 
subjects of the curriculum have so long served the purposes 
of instruction that they have cultivated a form of treatment 
and body of material which generation after generation has 
come to appreciate as a suitable vehicle for the general train- 
ing of the mind. These older subjects have a distinct advant- 
age over the newer subjects which are still trying out the 
subject matter which they utilize and the methods of presenting 
this subject matter." Why the full Latin requirement should be 
kept, p. 1-2. 



NEGATIVE DISCUSSION 

THE VALUE OF THE CLASSICS 1 

The thorough-going advocates of Classics hold Latin and 
Greek to be indispensable to a liberal education. They do not 
allow of an alternative road to our University Degrees. They 
will not admit that the lapse of three centuries, with their 
numerous revolutions, and their vast developments of new 
knowledge, make any difference whatever to the educational 
value of a knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics. They get 
over the undeniable fact, that we no longer employ these 
languages, as languages, by bringing forward a number of uses 
that never occurred to Erasmus, Casaubon or Milton. 

In the Middle Ages, the use of Latin was universal. After 
the taking of Constantinople, Greek literature burst upon 
Western Europe, and so entranced the choicer spirits as to 
bring about a temporary revival of Paganism. To the Christian 
scholarly enquirer, Greek was welcomed as laying open the 
original of the New Testament, together with the Eastern 
Fathers of the Church. The zeal thus springing up rendered 
possible the imposition of a new language upon educated youth, 
which might have well seemed too much for human indolence. 
Our Universities accepted the addition; and the teachers and 
pupils had to speak Latin, and read Greek. 2 

The men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had their 
own follies, errors, and superstitions; but their mode of estimat- 
ing the worth of the classical tongues was plain common sense. 
Says Hegius, the Dutch scholar (master of Erasmus, head of 
the College of Deventer, 1438-1468) : 'If anyone wishes to 

1 Alexander Bain. Education as a science. Chapters 10 and 11. 

2 Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was made the groundwork of educa- 
tion; not for the beauty of its classical literature, nor because the study of 
a dead language was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of 
acquiring a masterly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because it 
was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe, employed 
for public business, literature, philosophy, and science, above all, in God's 
providence, essential to the unity, and therefore enforced by the authority, 
of the Western Church. — (Mr. C. S. Parker, in Farrar's Essays on a 
Liberal Education, p. 7.) 



126 SELECTED ARTICLES 

understand grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history, or Holy 
Scripture, let him read Greek. We owe everything to the 
Greeks.' Luther advocated the new learning, in his own vehe- 
ment way: 'True though it be that the Gospel came and comes 
alone by the Holy Spirit, yet it came by means of the tongues, 
and thereby grew, and thereby must be preserved.' Melancthon 
regarded the languages solely as means to ends, and his scheme 
of education embraced all the departments of knowledge on 
their own account. Hieronymus Wolf, of Augsburg, was 
emphatic on the same point: 'Happy were the Latins,' he says, 
'who needed only to learn Greek, and that not by school- 
teaching, but by intercourse with living Greeks. Happier still 
were the Greeks, who, so soon as they could read and write 
their mother tongue, might pass at once to the liberal arts and 
the pursuit of wisdom. For us, who must spend many years 
in learning foreign languages, the entrance into the gates of 
Philosophy is much more difficult. For, to understand Latin 
and Greek is not learning itself, but the entrance-hall and ante- 
chamber of learning.' (Parker.) 

That the value of a knowledge of the classics, on the ground 
of the information exclusively contained in Greek and Latin 
authors, should decrease steadily, was a necessary result of the 
independent research of the last three hundred years. The rate 
of decrease has been accelerated during the last century by the 
, abundance of good translations from the classics. In this pro- 
gressive decrease a point must be reached when the cost of acquir- 
ing the languages would be set against the residuum of valuable 
information still locked up in them, and when the balance would 
turn against their acquisition. In the meantime, however, other 
advantages have been put forward that are considered sufficient 
to make up for the loss of value brought about by the causes 
now mentioned. 

I. The Information Still Locked up in Greek and Latin Authors 

This is the professional argument, but the case respecting 
it is so very obvious that we can hardly be too brief in presenting 
the matter. 

That there is not a fact or principle in the whole compass 
of physical science, or in the arts and practice of life, that is 
not fully expressed in every civilized modern language, will 



LATIN AND GREEK 127 

be universally allowed. There will not be quite the same 
consent as regards moral and metaphysical science; it being 
contended that in Plato and in Aristotle, for example, there are 
treasures of thought that never can be separated from their 
original setting in the Greek language. Again, the ancient 
literatures are the exclusive depositories of the historical and 
social facts of the ancient world; but all this is eminently 
translatable, and has been abundantly reproduced in the modern 
tongues. A certain exception, however, is made here also, 
namely, that for the inner or subjective life of the Greeks and 
Romans, the best translations must still be at fault. 

As regards Greek philosophy, it may be safely said that its 
doctrinal positions and subtle distinctions are at this moment 
better understood through translators and commentators, writing 
in English, French, and German, than they could have been to 
Bentley, Porson, or Parr. The truth is that, in translating, a 
knowledge of the subject is at least co-essential with a knowl- 
edge of the language. When the Professor of Greek Literature, 
in Cosmo's Platonic Academy at Florence, lectured on Plato, 
the Latin Aristotelians asked with indignation how a philosopher 
could be expounded by one who was none himself. 

That the inner life of the Greeks and Romans cannot be 
fully comprehended unless we know their own language, is a 
position that gives way under a close assault. The inner life 
must be understood from the outer life, and that can be repre- 
sented in any language. Whatever sets well before us the 
usages, the modes of acting and thinking, the institutions, and 
the historical incidents of any people, will enable us to compre- 
hend their inner life, as well as can be done in surveying them 
at a distance; and all this is quite possible through the medium 
of translators and commentators. 

This seems enough as far as concerns the professions. In 
medicine, for example, it will not be contended that there is 
anything to be gained by classical scholarship. Hippocrates 
has been translated. Whatever Galen knew is known indepen- 
dently of his pages. But indeed, only a purely historical value 
can attach to any medical work of the ancient world. 

Again, the lawyer can obviously dispense with Greek. There 
may be a certain claim made for Latin in his case, in conse- 
quence of our position with reference to Roman Jurisprudence. 



128 SELECTED ARTICLES 

But this too has been sufficiently represented in English works 
to make the whole subject accessible to an English reader. 
The Latin terms that have to be retained as untranslatable by 
single words in English can be explained as they occur, without 
anyone requiring to master the entire Latin language. As to the 
power of reading Latin title-deeds, if one man in a business 
establishment possesses it, that is enough. 1 

The plea for classics to the clergy has always been accounted 
self-evident and irresistible. Even here, however, there are 
qualifying circumstances. It is the business of a clergyman to 
understand the Bible, which involves Hebrew and Hellenistic 
Greek. Classical Greek and classical Greek authors are not 
necessary; while the utility of Latin extends only to the Latin 
Fathers, the scholastic theology, and the learned theologians of 
the Reformation, including Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and 
Turretin. 

Now there is no book that has been so abundantly commented 
on as the Bible. Every light that scholarship can strike out 
has been made to shine through the vernacular tongues; there 
is scarcely a text but can be understood by an English reader 
as the ablest scholars understand it; and the study of the 
original languages must be prosecuted to a pitch of first-rate 
scholarship before anything can be gained in addition to what 
everyone may know without scholarship. 

Among the caprices of opinion on the present question may 
be ranked the very slight stress that is put upon the Hebrew 
language in the education of the clergy. The most exacting 
churches receive a candidate for orders on a very easy Hebrew 
"pass; and it is never supposed that more than a small number 
of preachers in any church habitually consult the Hebrew Bible. 
Yet the Old Testament, containing as it does a large mass of 
sentiment and poetry, and referring to a state of society far 
removed from our own, is one of the books most difficult to 
exhibit in translation. Granted that, as respects the Old Testa- 
ment, there may be an unexhausted, possibly an inexhaustible, 
suggestiveness in the knowledge of the original tongue, the 
fact remains that inattention to Hebrew is all but universal; 
while, as respects the New Testament, a knowledge of the 

1 Mr. Sidgwick says a lawyer 'ought to be acquainted with Latin gram- 
mar, and a certain portion of the Latin vocabulary.' The necessity for 
the grammar is not self-evident. 



LATIN AND GREEK 129 

original can scarcely add anything to the ample exegesis provided 
by theological scholars. Whitfield knew no Hebrew and little 
Greek. 

The Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament does not 
involve classical Greek authors. It might be taught like Hebrew 
in the divinity schools, and entirely disconnected from the 
literature of Pagan Greece. That these Pagan authors should 
be nursing fathers and nursing mothers to the Christian Church, 
is a standing wonder. That Christian youth, so carefully with- 
held from the language of sexual impurity, should be allowed 
such a liberal crop of wild oats as a course of classical reading 
supplies, is not less wonderful. 

The natural course as regards the clergy would be to encour- 
age a small number of scholars to prosecute the study of the 
original languages of the Bible and all the allied learning, and 
to dispense with these languages as regards the mass of working 
clergy, who may turn their time to more profitable account. 

II. The Art Treasures of Greek and Roman Literature are 
Inaccessible Except Through the Languages 

It must ever remain true that certain artistic effects of 
literary composition, and more especially poetry, are bound up 
with the language of the writer, and cannot be imparted through 
another language. These very peculiar effects, however, are 
not the greatest in themselves, nor the most valuable for literary 
culture. The translatable peculiarities far transcend in value 
the untranslatable; if it were not so, where should we be with 
our Bible? Melody is the most intractable quality; of this alone 
can little or no idea be imparted by translations. Even the 
delicate associations with words can be expounded through our 
own language; just as they must be to the pupil who is studying 
the original. As regards all dead languages, much of this subtle 
essence must have vanished beyond recovery. Learning Greek 
does not put one in the same position to Homer and Sophocles, 
that learning German does to Goethe. All that a scholar can 
know he may find means of imparting to one that is not a 
scholar. 

The subtle incommunicable aroma of classical poetry is one of 
the luxuries of scholarship. The mass of students cannot reach 
it; and it may be bought too dear. Moreover, the translatable 



130 SELECTED ARTICLES 

virtue of the great poets is so great, that we may have many a 
rich feast, through translations alone: witness the enthusiasm 
for Pope's 'Homer.' Horace is perhaps the most untranslatable 
poet of antiquity; but the difficulty has been a stimulus to mar- 
vels of verbal dexterity in approaching the original ; and he that 
is conversant with the translations now accessible to the Eng- 
lish reader, cannot be far from the kingdom of heaven. 

III. The Classical Languages Train the Mind as Nothing 
Else Does 

This argument was not advanced in the days when the dead 
languages were useful in their character as languages; either 
it was not felt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or 
it was unnecessary. That it is so much relied upon now, is 
tantamount to a surrender of the previous arguments, or at 
least suggests doubts as to their sufficiency. It has that amount 
of vagueness about it that would make a convenient shelter to 
a bad case. We must ask specifically what the training consists in. 

For one thing, there is abundant employment given to the 
memory; but the proper word for this is not 'trained' but 
'expended.' A certain amount of the plastic force of the 
system is used up, and is therefore not available for other 
purposes. This is the cost of the operation, for which we have 
to show an equivalent in solid advantages. 

The faculties supposed to be trained are the higher faculties 
named Reason, Judgment, and Constructive or Inventive Power; 
and the exercises reckoned upon to give the training are conning 
grammar, and translating. 

The influence of Grammar can soon be told. To learn 
Grammar is, besides employing memory, to understand certain 
rules and to apply them as the cases arise, bearing in mind the 
exceptions when there are any. Inflexion is the easiest part. 
Latin nouns in a of the first declension are declined according 
to a type; one example is given, as penna, and the pupil has to 
adhere to the type with femina and the rest. This represents 
the operation that is requisite whenever we can rise from 
particulars to general knowledge. 'A fine day,' 'a good road,' 
'a boiling kettle,' 'a loaf of bread,' are general ideas that are 
connected with practical injunctions, and whoever has to comply 



LATIN AND GREEK 131 

with these injunctions must understand the ideas and apply 
them as the occasion serves. Sometimes the notion is accessible 
to the weakest capacity, sometimes it is the reverse; there are 
all degrees of difficulty up to the subtleties of professional lore, 
and the abstruseness of science or philosophy. The chief point 
is, that no branch can have a monopoly of the exercise of 
seeing the general in the particular; we cannot evade the neces- 
sity of the task. Whether one subject is better than another 
for our education in the matter depends upon whether it is 
possible to ease the labour of conceiving the more difficult 
abstractions by something foreign to them ; whether mathematics 
or metaphysics can be made easier by toiling in some foreign 
lines of thought, as Latin Grammar, English Grammar, or 
Botany. It remains for anyone to show that such an influence 
exists ; the arguments for the efficacy of grammatical discipline 
do not reach the point, they assume that grammar has a monopoly 
of exercising the mind upon generalities, a point that has yet 
to be proved. 

Grammar as exemplified in the Latin and Greek languages 
is particularly devoid of subtlety, until Ave come to certain 
delicacies of syntax, as in the construction of the tenses and 
moods of the Verb. The Parts of Speech are assumed without 
any definition; they are recognized by the Inflexion test, and 
not by their function in the sentence; being in that respect very 
different from what is found in English Grammar. This has 
been made an argument for taking Latin before English — the 
easy grammar before the abstruse one. But the greater should 
imply the less. If, at the proper age, a pupil has mastered 
English Grammar, he has, in point of reasoning power, gone a 
step beyond Latin or Greek grammar, and should therefore be 
relieved from further labour for perfecting his reasoning 
faculties in the grammatical field. 

It is in the exercise of translating from Latin or Greek into 
English, and vice versa, that the highest mental efforts are 
made, and the greatest strain put upon the faculties. Accord- 
ingly, it is to this exercise that the supposed training more 
especially applies. Now the mere conquering of difficulty is 
not special to any line of study; we must ^further enquire what 
are the special difficulties to be overcome. The exercise of 
translating is a constructive effort : given a passage, a certain 



132 SELECTED ARTICLES 

amount of grammatical and verbal knowledge, and the use of 
a dictionary, the pupil has to divine the meaning. There are 
three stages in the pupil's progress. In the first, his information 
and resources are unequal to the task, in which case the labour 
can do him very little good; we are not the better for working 
at a point where we cannot make any progress. The second 
stage is where, by a certain measure of application, the pupil 
can 'Succeed; in which case, the operation is exhilarating and 
rewarding, and will be achieved. The highest stage is when 
the work can be performed with ease, and without any effort 
at all ; in which stage there is no difficulty to be overcome, 
and, therefore, very little effect accruing from the exercise. 
We are to assume, what is not always the case, that the student 
can be uniformly placed in the second situation, and are to 
enquire what there is in the particular work to train, discipline, 
or strengthen any of the higher faculties. 

The translation exercise is a tentative process ; the meanings 
of the separate words have to be ascertained; and out of 
several meanings of any one word, a selection has to be made 
such as to give sense along with the selected meanings of the 
others. Various combinations have to be tried ; baffled at one 
attempt, the student must make a second and a third, until at 
last he alights upon something that pays a due regard to every 
word and every peculiarity of grammar. A considerable amount 
of patient effort is demanded, and the long-continued exercise 
of patient effort must do something to form habits of application. 
There is not, however, anything specific, unique, or unparalleled 
in the operation. All study whatsoever needs a similar exercise 
of patient application ; and many kinds of study take precisely 
the same form, namely, assigning to words alternative meanings, 
until some one meaning is hit upon that resolves a difficulty. 
It is the application needed to solve riddles and conundrums. 
To make out the meaning of a scientific proposition, to find 
the rule that fits a given case, we must try and try again ; we 
reject one supposition after another as not consistent with some 
of the conditions of the problem, and remain in patient thought 
until others come to mind. 

It is in the interpretation of language that most difficulty 
is felt in keeping the pupil always in the medium position above 
described ; giving him work to do that shall neither exceed his 



LATIN AND GREEK 133 

powers, nor be too easy to call them into full exercise. With a 
passage that the dictionary does not give the means of rendering, 
the chance is that the attempt will not be seriously made, so 
that the mind is not put on the qui vive to drink in with avidity 
the master's explanation. It is, moreover, generally admitted 
that the use of 'cribs' does away with the good of the situation, 
as regards translating into English. Hence to secure any 
discipline at all, the operation of translating from English into 
Latin and Greek must be kept up, although in itself the least 
useful of any. 

The remark could not fail to be made that the operation of 
translating is necessarily the same for ancient and for modern 
languages ; and, therefore, any modern language yields whatever 
discipline belongs to the situation. It cannot avail much, in 
reply, to advert to the peculiarities of the Latin and Greek 
Grammars — the more highly inflexional character of the lan- 
guages; for each language has its specialties, and the business 
of the pupil simply is to attend to them. Every language must 
express the same facts of time and manner, and it cannot be 
very material, as far as regards mental discipline, whether it is 
by inflexion or by auxiliaries. The fact of inflexion is sufficiently 
experienced in any case ; and how far it is carried is an inferior 
consideration. 

In Science, far more than in languages, is it possible to 
adjust the difficulties at each stage to the strength of the pupils, 
although, undoubtedly, to do this in any subject needs very 
good teaching. The Grammar of language being most nearly 
allied to science, can be best graduated in this way; while, in 
the miscellaneous chances of translation, difficulties start up 
without any reference to order or the preparation of mind of 
the pupils, and the thing cannot be otherwise. 

The argument from Training is applied to certain special 
points, some of which will be considered under separate heads : 
such are the discipline in English and in Philology generally. 
Much stress is laid upon the remark that it is necessary to 
know more languages than our own to be delivered from certain 
snares of language ; and the favourite example is the ambiguity 
of the verb 'to be.' It so happens, however, that this very 
ambiguity — predication and existence — was pointed out by Aris- 
totle (Grote's Aristotle, i. 181). * . 

1 In an address to the Social Science Association in 1870, Lord Neaves 



134 SELECTED ARTICLES 

In the interesting Rectorial Address of Professor Helmholtz, 
delivered this year to the University of Berlin, the merits and 
demerits of the different academical institutions of Europe are 
freely indicated. With reference to the English Universities, 
Oxford and Cambridge, the professor thinks his own country- 
men should endeavour to rival them in two things. 'In the 
first place, they develop in a very high degree among their 
students, at the same time, a lively sense of the beauties and the 
youthful freshness of antiquity, and a taste for precision and 
elegance of language; this is seen in the fashion in which the 
students manage their mother tongue.' This must refer to the 
prominence still given to the classics in Oxford and Cambridge; 
.yet, in Germany, the classics are far more studied than in Eng- 
land, whether we consider the universal compulsion of the Gym- 
nasia, or the special devotion manifested by a select number 
at the Universities. Whatever good mere classical study can 
effect must have reached its climax in Germany. As regards 
Oxford and Cambridge, and particularly Oxford, the best parts 
of the teaching seen to be those that depart most from the 
classical teaching, as, for example, the very great stress laid 
upon writing a good English essay. It is often said, that even 
in a professedly classical examination, a candidate's success 
is more due to his English Essay than to his acquaintance with 
Greek and Roman authors. 

After refuting a number of the alleged utilities of classical 
learning, Mr. Sidgwick still reserves certain distinct advantages 
as belonging to the study of language. 'In the first place, the 
materials here supplied to the student are ready to hand in 
inexhaustible abundance and diversity. Any page of any ancient 
author forms for the young student a string of problems suffi- 
ciently complex and diverse to exercise his memory and judg- 
ment in a great variety of ways. Again, from the exclusion of 
the distractions of the external senses, from the simplicity and 
definiteness of the classification which the student has to apply, 
from the distinctness and obviousness of the points that he is 
called on to observe, it seems probable that this' study calls 

recommended the study of Latin, Greek, and French, as the best means of 
cultivating precision of thinking. Now, whether or not the writers in 
those languages are distinguished above all others for precision, it is a 
singular fact, that these are the languages of the three peoples most remark- 
able for confining their attention to their own language. 



LATIN AND GREEK 135 

forth (especially in young boys) a more concentrated exercise 
of the faculties it does develop than any other could easily do. 
If both the classical languages were to cease to be taught in 
early education, valuable machinery would, I think, be lost, for 
which it would be somewhat difficult to provide a perfect 
substitute.' (Essays on a Liberal Education, p. 133.) 

The materials here spoken of must mean the subject matter 
of the ancient authors, and not simply the languages; this, 
however, does not help the case, as the matter can be far better 
given in translations. The second reason — the exclusion of the 
senses, and the simplicity and definiteness of the classification to 
be applied — must refer to the language part; but it contains 
nothing special to the classical languages. Moreover, as regards 
putting before the mind of a student distinct issues, and still 
more in adapting these to the state of his faculties and advance- 
ment, the learning of a language seems to me far inferior to 
most other exercises. 

IV. A Knowledge of the Classics is the Best Preparation for 
the Mother Tongue 

This must have reference either (1) to the Vocables of the 
Language, or (2) to the Grammar and Structure of our compo- 
sition. 

(1) As regards the vocables, we have to deal with the 
presence of Latin and Greek words in English. There being 
several thousands of our words obtained directly or indirectly 
from the Latin, it may be supposed that we should go direct 
to the foundation head, and learn the meanings in the parent 
language. But why may not we learn them exactly as they 
occur in the mother tongue? What economy is there in learning 
them in another place? The answer must be, with a qualification 
to be given presently, that the economy is all in favour of the 
first course. The reasons are plain. For one thing, if we learn 
the Latin words as they occur in English, we confine ourselves 
to those that have been actually transferred to English ; whereas 
in learning Latin as a whole, we learn a great many words that 
have never been imported into our own language. The other rea- 
son is probably still stronger, namely, that the meanings of a great 
number of the words have greatly changed since their introduc- 
tion into English; hence, if we go back to the sources, we 



136 SELECTED ARTICLES 

have a double task; we first learn the meaning in the original, 
and next the change of meaning that followed the appropriation 
of the word by ourselves. The meaning of 'servant' is easiest 
arrived at, by observing the use of the word among ourselves, 
and by neglecting its Latin origin ; if we are to be informed 
what 'servus' meant in Latin, we must learn further that such 
is not the present meaning; so that the directing of our atten- 
tion to the original, although a legitimate and interesting effort, 
does not pertain to the right use of our own language. 

Besides the vast body of Latin words entering into our 
language, as a co-equal factor with the Teutonic element, there 
is a sprinkling of special terms both Latin and Greek, adopted 
for technical and scientific uses. The appropriation of many of 
these is recent, and the process is still going on. Even with 
these, however, it is unsafe to refer to the original tongues 
for the meaning; we must still see what they mean as at present 
applied. A knowledge of Greek would be a fair clue to the 
meaning of 'thermometer,' and 'photometer,' and a few others; 
but for the vast mass of these appropriations, it gives no clue 
whatever, or else it puts us on the wrong scent. 'Barometer,' 
as 'weight-measure,' would be most suitably applied to the 
common beam and scales ; the real meaning would never be 
guessed. So, 'eudiometer' cannot suggest its meaning to a 
Greek scholar; 'hippopotamus' is equally enigmatic. Of the 
'ologies' very few correspond to their derivation. We have 
such conflicting names as 'astrology,' 'astronomy'; 'phrenology,' 
'psychology,' 'geology,' 'geography'; 'logic,' 'lographer,' 'logom- 
achy' ; 'theology,' 'theogony' ; 'aerostatics,' 'pneumatics.' 'Theol- 
ogy' being the science of 'God,' 'philology' should be the science 
of 'friendship' or the affections. It was remarked by Mr. Lowe 
that the word 'aneurism,' to a Greek scholar, would be mis- 
leading; he would not at once suppose that it is a derivative of 
the Greek verb avevpiva, 'to widen.' So with the word 'metho- 
dist,' the knowledge of Greek is not a help but a snare. 

It is well understood to be a reason for borrowing foreign 
words, that they do not suggest any meaning but the one 
intended to be coupled with them. In obtaining words for new 
general ideas, our native terms contain misleading associations ; 
the great virtue of the names — 'Chemistry,' 'Algebra,' 'rheuma- 
tism,' 'hydrated,' 'artery,' 'colloid' — is that we do not know 
what they originally meant; any designation that we could 



LATIN AND GREEK 137 

invent in our own language for such vast sciences as Chemistry 
and Algebra would contain some narrow and inadequate con- 
ception which would be a perpetual stumbling-block to the 
learner. 

The only qualification to the principle of learning the mean- 
ings of words from present use solely, is, that the classical 
words in our language are mostly derivatives from a small 
number of roots; so that a knowledge of the meanings of say 
a hundred roots assists in discovering the meanings of thousands 
of derivatives. Not but that we must still check every deriva- 
tive by present use; yet the memory is considerably assisted by 
a knowledge of the primitive meaning as partly retained in the 
numerous compounds. We must observe the present employ- 
ment of the words — 'agent,' 'actor,' 'enact,' 'action,' 'transaction' ; 
nevertheless, when we are informed of the original sense of 
the root 'ago,' we are enabled thereby to obtain a speedier 
hold of the meanings of the derivations. So with the Greek 
roots, — 'logos,' 'nomos,' 'metron,' 'zoon,' 'theos,' &c. This 
advantage, however, is attainable without entering upon a course 
of classical study. The roots actually employed in the language 
are separated and presented apart, and their derivatives set 
forth; and we are thus taught exactly that portion of the Latin 
and Greek vocabulary that serves the end in view. 

(2) The argument as applied to the Grammar or Syntax 
of our own language is equally at fault. The natural course 
in learning the grammatical order of English sentences is to 
study and practice English composition. To be habituated to 
different sentence arrangements must be rather obstructive than 
otherwise. The reference to any other language can only be a 
matter of curiosity. If it ever happened that our language 
could borrow an effective arrangement of syntax from any 
other language, the borrowing should have taken place once 
for all, so that all succeeding ages might adopt it as a naturalized 
usage. 

In connection with this argument may be taken the frequent 
allegation that the classics are an introduction to general Liter- 
ature, as affording the best models of taste and style ; in studying 
which we improve our compositions in our own language. There 
is here a host of loose assumptions. The excellence of the 
ancient writers is not uniform, and some assistance must be 
given to the pupil in discriminating the merits from the defects, 



138 SELECTED ARTICLES 

a lesson that would be best begun in our own language. More- 
over, the remark just made applies again. Whatever effects 
can be transferred by us to our own compositions cannot 
remain to be transferred now. The vast series of classical 
scholars that have written in the modern languages ought long 
before this time to have embodied whatever beauties can be 
passed on from the ancient literatures. In modern European 
literature there is a large school of imitators of the ancient 
authors, through whom we can derive at second hand all the 
characteristic effects possible to be reproduced in modern 
compositions. 

V. The Classical Languages are an Introduction to Philology 

This argument is one of the recently discovered make- 
weights on the side of classical teaching. The science of 
Philology is a new science; and before launching it into the 
present controversy, its claims as a branch of school or college 
education should be established on independent grounds. Having 
its ultimate roots in the human mind, like a great many other 
sciences, it is a recondite branch of the vast subject of Sociology, 
or Society, viewed both as structure and as history. Its 
immediate sources are the existing languages of mankind, which 
are made the subject of comparative study, with a view to trace 
community as well as diversity of structure (whence springs 
Universal Grammar) , and also historical connection and deriva- 
tion. Such a subject may enter into the curriculum of the 
higher education, but not at a very early stage ; it must allow 
priority to the more fundamental sciences. 

Assuming that the subject is to be received among school 
and college subjects, the bearing of the Classical languages is 
somewhat insignificant. Latin and Greek, as usually taught, 
are both defective and redundant in their bearing on General 
Philology. There are only two languages out of a multitude 
that have to be more or less minutely compared. The examples 
taken from other languages, Sanscrit for example, are of as 
great importance as those from Greek and Latin, and we 
cannot be expected to make an equal study of all these lan- 
guages. In point of fact, we must be taught Philology by 
examples cited from many languages, which we do not pay any 
further attention to; and the Greek and Latin examples may be 



LATIN AND GREEK 139 

obtained in the same partial way. The full knowledge of the 
Greek and Latin authors does not avail us for this subject. 1 

These are the leading arguments in favour of the present 
system of classical study. The supposition is that by their 
cumulative effect they justify the continuance of the system 
after the original occasion of its introduction has ceased. On 
reviewing the tenor of these arguments, however, we find that, 
after all, they do not support the real contention ; which is, that 
Latin and Greek, and they alone, as an undivided couple, shall 
continue to form the staple of our higher education. Several 
of the arguments apply equally to modern languages, and others 
would be met by the retention of Latin, by itself. 

The case is not complete until we view the arguments on the 
other side. 

I. The Cost 

The amount of time consumed in classical teaching during 
the best years of youth is well known to be very great, although 
not everywhere the same. In most classical schools in this 
country more than half the time of the pupils is occupied with 
Latin and Greek for a number of years ; and not long ago, nearly 
the whole time was taken up in many of our seminaries. In 
Germany, at the Gymnasia, six hours a week are given to Latin, 
for four years, and seven hours a week for other two years 
(age from twelve to eighteen) : seven hours a week are given 
to Greek, for two years, and six hours a week for other two 
years (age from fourteen to eighteen). At the University, it 
is optional to pursue Classics. 

The question, therefore, arises — Are the benefits commen- 
surate with this enormous expenditure of time and strength? 
We might grant that a small portion of time — two or three 
hours a week, for one or two years — might possibly be repaid 
by the advantages; but we are utterly unable to concede the 
equivalence of the results to the actual outlay. 

1 Mr. Sidgwick has some admirable remarks on this point in his Essay 
already referred to (p. 128). Mr. A. H. Sayce expresses himself strongly 
as to the small linguistic value of the two classical tongues. 'For purely 
philological purposes they are of less interest than many a savage jargon, 
the name of which is almost unknown, and certainly than those spoken 
languages of modern Europe whose life and growth can be watched like 
that of the living organism, and whose phrenology can be studied at first 
hand.' 'The greater the literary perfection of a language, the less is its 
importance to the mere glottologist.' {Nature, November 23, 1876.) 



140 SELECTED ARTICLES 

In the more recent system of teaching, under which some 
attention is given to the history and the institutions of Greece 
and Rome, a certain amount of valuable knowledge is inter- 
mixed with the useless parts of the teaching; and for this a 
small figure must be entered on the credit side. But all such 
knowledge could be imparted in a mere fraction of the time 
given to the languages. 

The classical system has been the practical exclusion of all 
other studies from the secondary or grammar schools. For a 
long time, the only subject tolerated in addition was a very 
elementary portion of Mathematics — Euclid and a little Algebra. 
The pressure of opinion has compelled the introduction of new 
branches — as English, Modern Languages, and Physical Sciences ; 
but either these are little more than a formality, or the pupils 
are subjected to a crushing burden of distracting studies. To 
be in school five hours a day, with two or three hours for 
home tasks, is too great a strain on youths between ten and 
sixteen. Moreover, in the evening preparations, it is found 
that the classical lessons absorb the greater part of the attention. 1 

The argument from disproportionate cost is sometimes met 
by alleging the defectiveness of the usual methods of teaching 
the languages; and many short and easy methods have been 
propounded. Experience has not yet shown any means of 
seriously reducing labour; and the thing is not likely. A vast 
acquisition is unavoidably involved in any cultivated language. 
The Grammar and the Vocabulary cannot be committed to 
memory without a large expenditure of strength; and the 
authors to be read have each their special peculiarities to be 
mastered. The observance of the methods of good teaching 
will make a considerable and important difference, but will not 
dispense with the demand of two or three hours a day for 
several years to attain a moderate proficiency in Latin and 
Greek. Moreover, the system as practised, throws away the 
best known device for accelerating lingual study ; namely, allowing 
a familiarity with the subject matter of the several authors to 

1 We are rapidly approaching a compromise between the new and the 
old systems, on the basis of omitting one of the twoclassical tongues, that 
is, Greek; the Latin alone to continue as an imperative branch of the cur- 
riculum of higher education. A considerable relief will no doubt be 
experienced by throwing Greek into option; but the radical evil of our 
Grammar School system will remain. The two best_ hours of the day for 
several years will still be given to a barren occupation; and the thorough 
reconstruction of the scheme of liberal studies will be indefinitely post- 
poned. 



LATIN AND GREEK 141 

be attained in advance. The pupils in the Latin and Greek 
classes have not as yet been initiated into any important subject; 
and what renders the study tolerable is the large devotion 
of time to the one theme of universal interest — personal 
narrative. 

II. The Mixture of Conflicting Studies Impedes the Course of 
the Learner 

On the supposition that the classical languages are taught, 
not in their simple character as languages, but with a view 
to logical training, training in English, literary culture, general 
philology, — the carrying out of so many applications at one 
time, and in one connection, is fatal to progress in any. Although 
the languages may never actually be used, the linguistic diffi- 
culties of the acquisition must be encountered all the same ; 
and the attention of the pupil must be engrossed in the first 
instance with overcoming these difficulties. It is, therefore, an 
obvious mistake in teaching method to awaken the mind to 
other topics and considerations, while the first point has not been 
reached. I have everywhere maintained as a first principle of 
the economy or conduct of the Understanding, that separate 
subjects should be made separate lessons. This is not easy 
when two studies are embodied in the some composition, as 
language and meaning ; in that case the separation can be effected 
only by keeping one of the two in the background throughout 
each lesson. 

The least questionable effect of classical study (although 
one equally arising from modern languages) is the exercise of 
composing in our own language through translation. Still, it is 
but a divided attention that we can give to the exercise. We 
are under the strain of divining the meaning of the original, 
and cannot give much thought to the best mode of rendering 
it in our own language. This is necessarily a varying position. 
There may be occasions when the sense of the original is got 
without trouble, and when we are free to apply ourselves to the 
expression — in English, or whatever language we are using. 
But this is all a matter of chance ; and such desultory fits of 
consideration are not the way to make progress in a vast study. 
Moreover, the master is a man chosen because he is a proficient 
in classics, not because he has any special or distinguishing 
acquaintance with the modern language. Now it must seem 



142 SELECTED ARTICLES 

incontestable that the only way to overtake an extensive and 
difficult department of information and training, is to proceed 
methodically, and with exclusive devotion of mind at stated 
times, under the guidance of an expert in the department. All 
experience shows that only very inferior English composition is 
the result of translating from Latin or Greek into English. 
There is necessarily a good deal of straining to make the 
English fit the original; while the greater number of the most 
useful forms of the language are never brought into requisition 
at all. 

There is something plausible in the supposition of cultivating 
all the faculties at one stroke, as if an exercise could be invented 
that could teach spelling, cooking, and dancing, simultaneously. 
Because the same piece of composition involves grammar, 
rhetoric, scientific information and logical method, we are not 
to infer that it should be the text for all these lessons at one 
time. It is not merely that the way to carry the mind forward 
in the several departments is, to keep it continuously fixed on 
each for a certain duration ; equally pertinent is the fact that, 
although every passage occurring in a lesson must needs embody 
language, rhetoric, and information, the same passage does not 
equally suit for all the applications. 

It may be true that classical education is many-sided ; but 
what if it is defective on each side? 'The very fact that the 
same instrument is made to serve various educational purposes, 
which seems at first sight a very plausible argument in its 
favour, is really, for the majority of boys, a serious disadvantage.' 
(Sidgwick, ut supra, p. 127.) 

The study of fine Literary effects cannot be carried on in 
connection with Latin and Greek, not only because of the 
distraction of the mind with other things, but because of the 
random, uncertain, unconsecutive way that the examples are 
brought forward. Even if there were no order whatever in 
the parts of a subject, still the irregular presentation of these 
would be adverse to a cumulative impression. The same would 
apply to General Philology, if that were regarded as one of the 
uses of classical study. 

The conclusion on the whole is, that the teaching of language 
is most rationally conducted when it stands on the original 
footing of the classical languages in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, i.e. when the language itself as a means of inter- 
pretation and communication, is the fact, and the whole fact. 



LATIN AND GREEK 443 

The attention of the pupils could then be kept to the one point 
of mastering grammar and vocables : the authors studied would 
be studied with this sole aim. The language teacher is not an 
interpreter and expounder of history, poetry, oratory and phi- 
losophy, but an instrument for enabling the pupils to extract 
these from their original sources in some foreign tongue. 

III. The Study is Devoid of Interest 

This may not be universally admitted, but it is sufficiently 
attested for the purposes of the present argument. There is, 
first, the dryness inseparable from the learning of a language, 
especially at the commencement. There is, next, the circum- 
stance that the literary interest in the authors is not felt, for 
want of due preparation. It is a fact that, but for the never- 
failing resource of sensation narrative, by which we aroUse the 
dormant intellect of the child in the second standard, the reading 
of classical authors would be intolerable at the early age when 
they are entered upon. 

It is the nature of science to be more or less dry; until its 
commanding power is felt the path of the learner is thorny. But 
literature is nothing, if not interesting. There should be even 
in a course of Belles-Lettres, a certain amount of science, in 
the shape of generalities and technicalities ; but these are soon 
passed, and the mind is free to expatiate in the rich pastures of 
the literary domain. Literature, instead of being the dismal 
part of the school exercises, should be the alternative and relief 
from Mathematics and the elements of Science generally. This 
cannot be, if the pupils are thrust prematurely upon a foreign 
literature while mastering several new vocabularies. It is now 
plain to the best educationists, that our own literature must be 
the first to awaken literary interest, and prepare the way for 
universal literature. 

IV. The Study Panders too Much to Authority in Matters 
of Opinion 

The classical student is unduly impressed with the views 
promulgated by the Greek and Roman authors, from the very 
length of time that he is occupied with them. The authority of 
Aristotle, once paramount in the world of thought, has long 
ceased to be infallible, but the reference to his supposed opinions 



144 SELECTED ARTICLES 

is still out of proportion to any value that can now belong to 
them. Any views of his as to the best form of government, as 
to happiness and duty, are interesting as information, but useless 
as practice. 

A curious and expressive incident occurred at a recent meet- 
ing of the British Association. Sir William Thomson, in the 
course of a paper read before his section, desired his hearers, 
when they went to their homes, to draw their pens through a 
certain paper of his in their copies of the 'Proceedings of the 
Royal Society.' It would be well if the example were imitated 
by every philosopher that has happened to change any of his 
opinions. Even if we accorded to Aristotle a commanding 
sagacity in Ethics and in Politics, we should like to have his 
latest decisions as to the value of what we now possess as 
his writings. 

The Renovated Curriculum 

On the supposition that Languages are in no sense the main 
part of Education, but only helps or adjuncts under definite 
circumstances, the inference seems to be, that they should not, 
as at present, occupy a central or leading position, but stand 
apart as side subjects available to those that require them. 

I conceive that the curriculum of Secondary or Higher 
Education should, from first to last, have for its staple the 
various branches of knowledge culture, including our own 
language. The principal part of each day should be devoted 
to these subjects; while there should be a certain amount of 
spare time to devote to languages and other branches that are 
not required of all, but may be suitable to the circumstances 
of .ndividuals. 

The essentials of a curriculum of the Higher Education may 
be summed up under three heads :— 

I. Science, including the Primary Sciences, as already set 
forth ; some one or more of the Natural History Sciences — 
Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology, Geology; to which may be added 
Geography. To what extent this vast course should enter into 
general education has already been sufficiently discussed. Our 
present purpose does not require the nice adjustment of details. 

II. A course of the Humanities, under which I include 
(i) History, and the various branches of Social Science that 
can be conveniently embraced in a methodical course. Mere 



LATIN AND GREEK 145 

narrative History would be merged in the Science of Govern- 
ment, and of Social Institutions, to which could be added Polit- 
ical Economy, and, if thought fit, an outline of Jurisprudence 
or Law. This would put in the proper place, and in the most 
advantageous order of study, one large department recently 
incorporated with the teaching of the classical languages by way 
of redeeming their infertility. 

(2) Under the Humanities might next be included a view 
more or less full, of Universal Literature. Pre-supposing those 
explanations of the Literary Qualities and Arts of Style that 
should be associated, in the first instance, with our own language, 
and also some familiarity with our own Literature, we could 
proceed to survey the course and development of the Literature 
of the World through its principal streams, including of neces- 
sity the Greek and Roman Classics. It is needless to add that 
this should be done without demanding a study of the original 
languages. How far a Philosophy of Literature should penetrate 
the survey I do not at present enquire. Materials, already exist 
in abundance for such a course. It is the beau-ideal of Rhetoric 
and Belles-Lettres as conceived by the chief modern authorities 
in the department, as for example, Campbell and Blair in last 
century. Only, I should propose that the elements of Rhetoric, 
in connection with our own Literature, should lead the way. 

Such a course would carry out, with effect and thoroughness, 
what is very imperfectly attempted in conjunction with the 
present classical teaching. A tolerably complete survey of the 
chief authors of Greece and Rome, with studies upon select 
portions of the most important, could be achieved in the first 
instance; and it might be possible to include also a profitable 
acquaintance with the great modern literatures. 

III. English Composition and Literature. — This might 
either pervade the entire curriculum, or be concentrated in the 
earlier portions, the General Literature being deferred. What it 
comprises, according to my view, has been sufficiently stated. The 
survey of Universal Literature, would operate beneficially upon 
the comprehension of our own. 

These three departments appear to me to have the best 
claims to be called a Liberal Education. The deviation from the 
received views is more in form than in substance. I would 
not call Science alone a Liberal Education, although a course 
that implied a fair knowledge of the Primary Sciences, a certain 



146 SELECTED ARTICLES 

amount of Natural Science, and a wide grasp of Sociology, would 
be no mean equipment for the battle of life. I think, however, 
that the materials of Sociology might be accumulating all through 
the curriculum, and might serve to alleviate the severity of 
the strictly scientific course. 

I think, moreover, that a Liberal Education would not be 
generally considered complete without Literature, although 
people must needs differ as to the amount. I hold that the 
three departments stated are sufficiently comprehensive for all 
the purposes of a general education, and that no other should 
be exacted as a condition of the University Degree — the received 
mode" of stamping an educated man. 

Such a course should be so conducted as to leave a portion 
of time and strength for additional subjects. An average of 
two or three hours a day might be occupied with the continuous 
teaching in the three departments. Assuming a six years' 
curriculum — covering the Secondary School and the University 
courses — it is easy to see that a large amount of thorough 
instruction might be imparted in those limits; leaving perhaps 
one third of the pupil's available time, for other things. 

Of the extra, or additional subjects, Languages would have 
the first claim. These, however, should not be under any 
authoritative prescription ; they should never enter into any 
examinations for testing general acquirements. Every person 
going through such a course as we have supposed, would be 
urged and advised to take up at least one foreign language, 
giving the preference to a modern language : the intention being 
to learn it up to the point of use as a language. How many 
languages any given person should study must depend upon 
circumstances. The labour of a new language is not to be 
encountered without a distinct reason. It is never too late to 
learn any language that we discover ourselves to be in want of. 
If we need it for information on a particular subject, we can 
learn it up to that point and no farther. 

An hour every day may be available at any part of the course 
for a new language, whether modern or ancient. If either Latin 
or Greek is taken up, it would be learnt strictly by the grammar 
and the dictionary; just as Dutch and Gaelic would be learnt: 
we should not diverge into literary matters, or the criticism 
of beauties ; all which would be reduced to a small compass. 



LATIN AND GREEK 147 

after a survey of the literature, and a familiarity with good 
translations. 

There would be no need to begin the study of language 
early, and little advantage : and it would be undesirable to take 
two languages together. There are other matters to divide the 
extra hours with languages. I need only mention Elocution as 
appertaining to every one. For more special tastes would be 
provided Music and Drawing. There would also be a variety 
of special courses on branches of knowledge not embraced in 
the regular curriculum. In a well-provided institution, there 
might be classes devoted to Anglo-Saxon, General Philology, 
select portions of History, and so on. I am not specially 
adverting to the topics preparatory to the several professions. 

The reasons for the change now proposed have been given 
in substance already. They are contained in the general argu- 
ment as to the position of languages in general, and of classics 
in particular. Besides the consideration that languages should 
be learnt only when meant to be used as languages, I have all 
along put great stress on the wastefulness of carrying on several 
incongruous lessons at one time. From the first statement of 
the Laws of Agreement onwards, I have contended for the 
necessity of like going with like in the same exercise. 

I have also urged the economy of learning language after 
laying up a good stock of ideas. Setting aside the pronunciation 
of a foreign language, the acquisition of the grammar and the 
vocabulary is easier late than early; any decay in the plastic 
force of memory is more than made up by the other advantages. 

The scheme thus set forth appears the only means of arresting 
the tendency inevitable at the present day to excessive special- 
izing of the studies constituting a liberal education. It is the 
supposed necessity of retaining dead languages and of adopting 
foreign living languages as an integral part of education, that 
leads to options so very wide as to leave out science almost 
entirely from one course, and literature almost entirely from 
another. A mere language course, containing as it does irregular 
smatterings of history and of literature, is not an adequate 
cultivation of the human faculties ; it is defective both on the 
side of training and the side of knowledge imparted. On 
the other hand, I regard it as equally undesirable to limit the 
course of study to science, still less to physical science (excluding 



148 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Logic and Psychology), least of all to Mathematics and Physics, 
The more obvious objections to the proposed curriculum may 
be glanced at. 

First. It will be called by the dreaded name — Revolution. 
Yet the revolutionary element is not very great after all. It 
consists only in putting languages in the second place, reserving 
the first to the subject-matter. The scheme pays great regard 
to the element of the antique, as represented by Greece and 
Rome, and would render the acquaintance with the history and 
literatures of both countries, more general and more thorough 
than at present. A day may come when this amount of attention 
will be thought too much. 

Second, Classics will be ruined. To this there are several 
answers. According as people believe the classical languages 
to be useful, they will keep them up to that extent and no 
more. But classics will never cease, so long as the existing 
endowments continue. A small number of persons will always 
be encouraged to master those languages thoroughly, so as to 
maintain the study of the history and literature of the ancient 
world. The teachers of ancient literature would be expected 
to know the originals ; and they alone would constitute a con- 
siderable body. 

Third. Some minds are incapable of science, and more 
especially of Mathematics, the foundation of the whole. In 
answer to this we may freely concede, that many minds find 
abstract notions exceedingly distasteful and, as a consequence, 
difficult. Men of admitted ability have been found incapable 
of mastering Euclid, while at home in languages, and in litera- 
ture. In this case, however, the disproportionate pursuit of the 
one department has been the real obstacle. The- experience of 
existing Universities shows that four men out of five can pass 
for a degree, containing elementary Mathematics. Perhaps their 
comprehension of the subject is not great or exact; but if their 
minds were more disengaged, they could understand it suffi- 
ciently to go on with a course of the experimental and other 
sciences, in which the interest would be more universal. 

Although there are men of good judgment or practical sense, 
who have never had any abstract teaching, and might seem 
incapable of it, yet the highest order of judgment combines 
both abstract notions with concrete experience; and in a 



LATIN AND GREEK 149 

thoroughly liberal education, abstract science ought not to be dis- 
pensed with. 

It may be remarked finally that any man possessing a thor- 
oughly grammatical knowledge of several languages is not 
wanting in aptitude for abstract science; grammar does not 
amount to a scientific discipline, but it attests the capability of 
undergoing such a discipline. 1 



LIBERAL EDUCATION WITHOUT LATIN 2 

Let us, with something of the resolution with which we are 
now meeting the stern realities of war, also recognize that as a 
people we are deficient in the standards and attainments of 
liberal education as these are required to live up to the position 
and responsibilities which are sure to be ours in the twentieth 
century, as a result of this war; that ours is a conspicuously 
superficial culture ; and that our ideals and our insight, where 
the genuine humanities of our day are involved, are in many 
essential respects lacking in depth and sincerity, and especially 
in the qualities of reality. As certainly as we watched from a 
distance the present storm mount and finally sweep us into its 
depths while we trembled in apprehension and irresolution, so 
certainly shall we again and again find ourselves in the near 
future unready to meet the new world problems that are 
inevitably to confront us. We are seriously unprepared for 
our coming part in diplomacy, interchange of knowledge, and 
the promotion of constructive programs making for international 
co-operation and friendliness. 

How many among us can use a foreign language with 
precision and effect? To whom shall we look when we seek 
spokesmen to the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese and the 
Brazilians? How few and how meagrely read are the books 
and journals that speak to our people of the profounder stirrings 

1 The curriculum now roughly sketched would harmonize the course of 
primary and secondary education, and do away with the troublesome bifur- 
cation of the Ancient and the Modern sides, which at present complicates 
and embarrasses our higher schools and colleges. The work of the primary 
school is necessarily on the lines here laid down, and could be made still 
more profitable by a closer adherence to the same plan. There would be 
a common ground for all the professions to meet. 

2 Prof. David Snedden, School Review. 26:576-99. October, 1918. 



150 SELECTED ARTICLES 

of government, social policy and economic enterprise in 
those lands whose destinies are sure yet to be interwoven 
with our own ! How little in any genuine sense do we yet 
appreciate the extent and character of the transformations even 
now steadily and rapidly taking place in the very soil from 
which spring those plants that we call art, literature, culture, 
religion, and democracy, because of contemporary diffusion 
and deepening of scientific spirit and method ! 

And yet in some respects we are the most extensively taught 
people in the world. In the public and private high schools of 
the United States are found today many hundreds of thousands 
of our most gifted and most ambitious boys and girls between 
fourteen and eighteen years of age. Our numerous colleges, 
founded close upon the heels of settlement in all our states, 
and especially colleges making no pretensions as to offerings 
of special vocational training, have long been crowded with 
young men and women, the finest products of our blended and 
prosperous people. America has not stinted in providing for 
aspiring youth the means of culture as that has been understood. 
In no other country has so large a proportion of young men 
and women been given the opportunities and incentives for all 
those studies which supposedly make for informing the mind 
and enriching the spirit — in other words, for humanism. 
Certainly, we can hardly rebuke ourselves for indifference, for 
deficiency of high intent, or for niggardliness of support in 
matters of what we believed to be liberal education. And 
it is just as certain, notwithstanding frequent allegations to the 
contrary, that the large majority of the hundreds of thousands 
of youth constantly seeking our higher schools and colleges, are 
not in quest, only, or even chiefly, of the education which they 
can turn to immediate practical advantage— in the narrowly 
utilitarian sense. 

Nevertheless, in spite of good intentions and an abundant 
provision of material means, our agencies of liberal education 
have, I believe, conspicuously failed to meet the needs of our 
nation in this age. They have left us in a state of intellectual 
and spiritual unpreparedness. Why? Largely, I contend, 
because those to whom we have entrusted the direction of our 
institutions of higher learning have had no adequate under- 
standing of the meaning and character of liberal education as 
that must be developed for the needs of a dynamic civilization 



LATIN AND GREEK 151 

expanding and deepening into the twentieth century, a civilization 
carrying along growing aspirations for democracy, for harmony 
among peoples, and for profounder understanding of the essen- 
tial things of the present and the future. At a time when all 
the vital elements of political, religious, economic and cultural 
life were being reshaped by forces of incomprehensible magnitude 
and complexity, many of our strongest educational leaders have 
continued to prostrate themselves before decaying shrines of 
the past. With good intentions, but bad performance, they 
have, in the name of an unsound psychology and a false 
pedagogy, constituted themselves the voluntary defenders of a 
static social order. With eyes aloof and minds closed to the 
realities of present and future, they have ever tried to hold the 
thoughts and aspirations of their disciples to the departed 
glories of a Greece or a Rome, to the culture of a thirteenth 
or sixteenth century, on the assumption that these, and these 
chiefly, exemplify the high and noble things of spirit and mind 
which should be the foundation of all fine learning suited to a 
modern world 

For generations, and almost unto yesterday, they caused the 
dead hands of Latin, Greek and mathematics to hold in leash 
and often to paralyze the aspirations of our youth to share in 
the appreciation, and perhaps to aid in the creation, of cultural 
products significant of our New World character and oppor- 
tunities. Millions of American boys and girls, the best of our 
stock and of our democratic social life, have come gladly up 
to our schools, naively seeking the bread that would nurture 
them in the idealism and achievement of modern America ; and 
to them has been given — what? Shreds and scraps of two 
complex ancient languages that were never to become really 
intelligible to most of them, and could not, in the very nature 
of the case, become more than slightly intelligible, except to a 
very few, and which were destined to be, in ninety-nine cases 
out of every hundred, almost completely forgotten within ten 
years of the closing of school life. Accompanying the prescribed 
and often meaningless studies of the grammar and composition 
of these languages, were also studies, hardly less pitiful, of 
classical texts, to the elucidation of which the less scrupulous 
students have helped themselves by the ever-ready interlinear. 
Hundreds of thousands of our youth have toiled reluctantly 
line by line through the Anabasis and millions have painfully 



152 SELECTED ARTICLES 

translated Caesar's Commentaries — splendid bits of composition 
in themselves, but about as significant to the realities of a 
nineteenth or twentieth century as bows and arrows would 
be in modern warfare, or Roman galleys in the naval contests 
of tomorrow. Our educational conservatives have been indus- 
triously trying to gather figs of liberal education from the 
thistles of the classics. They have turned their eyes so con- 
stantly backward that they have themselves eventually become 
incapable of seeing clearly the realities of present and future. 
They have never, learned that the twentieth century was event- 
ually due in education as it was obviously arriving in science, 
economic achievement, social economy, medicine, engineering, 
and agriculture. 

It was inevitable, of course, that as America found itself 
politically, economically, and socially, it should try to free 
itself of the obviously useless trammels of the past. Classical 
studies in schools and colleges have therefore become more and 
more vestigial. Boys and girls by hundreds of thousands, and 
usually those of superior ability and home environment, still 
elect the skeletonized Latin offered in public high schools, 
because of the possibility that they may want to attend those 
strong, endowed institutions whose social connections, wealth 
and historic strength enable them long to resist the modernizing 
influences to which institutions more closely in touch with the 
spirit of the age and more responsive to the will of democracy 
have in part yielded. Almost universally in our private schools, 
and still quite generally in our public schools, American youth 
study and recite in perfunctory spirit the meaningless rituals 
of Latin Grammar and Roman classic. But there rarely results 
any genuine interest in either the ancient language or its so- 
called literature. The wholesome common-sense characteristic 
of Americans soon asserts itself. Half contemptuous, half 
tolerant, and wholly uninterested, and an easy victim to the 
dishonesty of the "pony," the boy passes his antiquated tests 
for admission to the college whose social opportunities mean 
so much to him. He promptly relegates to the lumber-room 
of his mind the broken antiques with which misguided teachers 
have tried to equip him. The colleges (a steadily diminishing 
number, however), having exacted the ancient ceremonial 
observance, now usually permit the youth to proceed in freer 
ways toward his degree. 



LATIN AND GREEK 153 

But if the study of Latin has degenerated to the vestigial 
position here indicated, why the strong opposition manifested 
against it on the part of those who call themselves liberals in 
secondary and college education? The exactions of time and 
energy imposed by the stated amounts of Latin now required 
by even our more conservative institutions do not seem exces- 
sive. A minimum of from one to two thousand hours of study 
and recitation given out of the lifetime of an individual to an 
enterprise of learning with such honorable antecedents (in 
former centuries) as the study of Latin surely seems no great 
sacrifice. The college admission requirement against which we 
inveigh rarely demands more than one-fourth of the learner's 
time through a four-year secondary school course 

It ought to be obvious that, in the main, the motives of 
those who seek to remove Latin from the list of the specific 
prescriptions required for any high school course, or for 
candidacy for any liberal arts degree are not founded on mere 
prejudice or utilitarianism. It is, of course, an easily made 
charge that the so-called opponents of Latin — who are in reality 
only opponents of the monopolistic position accorded at present 
to Latin — are interested only in bread-and-butter education, 
that they are lacking in devotion to the ideals of culture, that 
they are infected with the anarchistic spirit of the age which 
would cut loose from the moorings of established institutions 
and inherited traditions. 

It is not part of my present purpose to reply to these criti- 
cisms. However well founded they may be in the case of a few 
opponents of Latin, they do not apply to the many students of 
education whose attitudes have been formed only as a result 
of extensive comparative study of the possible and desirable 
objectives of all advanced instruction and training. 

Those of us who disapprove the present protected position 
of Latin as a secondary school study, a position made possible 
only by the requirements imposed by powerful institutions of 
higher learning, do so for the very fundamental reasons, that, 
in the first place, the insistently repeated allegations as to the 
educational values of Latin as now taught, are in fact, without 
demonstrated validity, and, that, in the second place, Latin, 
as an artificially protected study, stands as one pronounced 
barrier to the development of truly effective liberal education 
suited to the genius of the American people and to the needs 



154 SELECTED ARTICLES 

of a twentieth century democracy. We contend that to give 
any study in a system of liberal education a sacrosanct and 
artificially protected place on half mystical and wholly tradi- 
tional grounds, is to corrupt the sources, and to invalidate the 
methods, of all true liberal education from the outset. The 
values pretended to be found in the study of Latin impress the 
scientific person who thinks in terms of present and future 
results as being like the meaningless mummeries and symbols 
of religious rituals that have long outlived the period of their 
vitality. These alleged values rest actually in part on old 
customs of little present worth, in part on mere stubborn devo- 
tion to the ancient for its own sake, and in part on the rewards 
always to be won by clever exploiters of the credulity of those 
whose faiths are easily enlisted in the ultra-modern or ultra- 
antique. 

What curious defenses are still conjured up in defense of the 
classical studies and especially on behalf of that clinging "dead 
hand" study, Latin ! All educators of any breadth of view 
appreciate the unequalled importance of the "humanities," those 
studies designed to lead the minds and spirits of our growing 
youth to apprehend the things that have fine and big messages 
of human possibilities and achievement. In a broad and real 
sense the "humanities" are always to be cherished as vital 
studies in any plan of liberal education. But are we to delude 
ourselves into thinking that the slow and perfunctory dissection 
of a few classical works of literature, produced by great minds 
that lived in regions and times the thoughts, feelings, and 
aspirations of which are almost inconceivably far removed from 
ours, could serve, except in one possible instance in a thousand, 
to produce the kinds of insight and appreciation that are prop- 
erly to be begotten of those studies which we may sincerely 
call the humanities? 

Again, we are solemnly assured that through the study of 
these ancient languages and the few easily available examples 
of their literatures, there is produced a kind of magic mental 
discipline, a unique kind of sharpening of the mental faculties, 
not to be found in studies of other languages or literatures, 
nor in other subjects based on the realities of our own day and 
generation. As if the living gymnastics of mind were not best 
to be secured through those activities of mental and spiritual 
apprehension and action which come from strong efforts to 



LATIN AND GREEK 155 

possess and to control the realities of habit, knowledge, and 
ideal that have worth for today and for tomorrow ! 

We are told, too, in words of well simulated profundity, 
that contemporary civilization has its roots in the old civiliza- 
tions which flourished in the Italian and Grecian peninsulas, 
and that it is through study of the surviving desiccated exam- 
ples of those cultures that our youth are best able to gain access 
to the more complex cultures of our own times. As if any 
sound system of pedagogy should or could have the unformed 
mind make its first essays in fields that are so remote in time 
and place as still to be largely unintelligible ! 

We are also assured that some knowledge of Latin is essen- 
tial to the mastery of English or of a modern foreign language. 
But here again, we are given no evidence that makes allowance 
for the great selective forces operating in schools as heretofore 
conducted. Many a self-educated Lincoln or Walt Whitman 
has given us fine virile English ; and certainly thousands who 
have made good records in Latin and Greek have later given 
us English that is but as hollow brass and tinkling cymbal. 
We know too little yet of the psychology of good language 
training to speak with confidence of these matters. If, as a 
partial results of the numberless hours given by our youth to 
the study of the classics since colonial days, we could point to 
prevalent forceful and fine vernacular usage as one accomplish- 
ment, and to some real mastery of modern foreign tongues as 
another, there would at least be ground for shifting the burden 
of proof to the opponents of the monopolies long accorded 
to Latin and Greek and still held by Latin. But, in reality, 
we exhibit among our college-educated classes no such achieve- 
ments that are not equally to be attributed to the superior home 
environments and to the opportunities and exactions of the 
social positions of these more favored groups Any critical 
analysis, even in the light of our present uncertain educational 
science, of the valuable objectives and useful methods of lan- 
guage training, either in the vernacular or in a foreign tongue, 
must always strengthen the convictions of common sense that 
direct investment of available time and energy in the positive 
and specific pursuit of the actual ends we desire is the best 
investment we can make. 

Finally, we are told that students who elect Latin in our 
schools reveal themselves later as having better minds than 



156 SELECTED ARTICLES 

those who do not take Latin, and that as men and women they 
succeed better along almost all lines. But to those who realize 
the forces of selection always operative among parents and 
even among children themselves, the inferences usually drawn 
from these facts represent the baldest kind of reasoning "post 
hoc ergo propter hoc." There is much evidence indeed that 
heretofore, and even yet, pupils electing courses containing 
Latin are natively superior to those who do not make such 
elections. Parents aspiring after the best for their children do 
not set themselves up as experts in determining values of 
studies. Naturally, they accept the judgments of the higher 
institutions, and, in matters in which confessedly they have 
little knowledge, they prefer to abide by respected custom and 
tradition. But there exists as yet no available evidence to 
show that, even in mental powers, as judged by ordinary 
standards, the superior students found in Latin owe their 
superiority to their Latin studies. 

It is not here contended, of course, that other secondary 
school studies, as now administered, give results superior to 
Latin. Practically, viewed from the standpoint of the needs 
of our age, our entire program of secondary education has been 
stricken with the blight of blind traditionalism and formalism. 
Mathematics, the one other subject apart from English that 
enjoys a monopolistic position like that held by Latin, supplies 
to most of the girls and to many of the boys obliged to study it, 
probably nothing more substantial than intellectual husks. 
French and German, as now taught, are, when judged by the 
standards of interest and mastery that should characterize a 
truly liberal education, largely cultural shams. High school 
sciences, long ago placed under the bondage of a pedagogy 
derived from a now obsolete theory of mental faculties, have 
become bankrupt as means of giving genuine appreciation and 
insight to the mind that must interpret well or ill the scientific 
social inheritance of the 19th century. Even history and Eng- 
lish literature, largely because of faulty aims and method have 
so far failed to yield to our millions of youth the riches of 
humanistic vision and sentiment which ought certainly to be 
derived from these studies when pursued under right conditions. 

What we now need is someone to speak to us with the voice 
of a trumpet the message which seems long ago to have been 
heard by young Athenians — that has everywhere been heard 



LATIN AND GREEK 157 

by generous youth destined to add to the spiritual possessions 
of their age — namely that as a strong people, our best oppor- 
tunities to develop new strength, to do creative work, are here 
and now. We must learn to build for today and the future, 
and to turn to the past only when, in any given case, we shall 
have planted our feet firmly on the rock of the living present 
and the nascent tomorrow. Let us as a nation take due pride 
in the achievements of our forefathers and ourselves, and at the 
same time earnestly resolve yet farther to enrich humanity by 
our efforts. 

America's contributions already made to the social inheri- 
tance of the modern world are neither meagre nor unimportant. 
Our democratic ideals of government and social life, our scien- 
tific mastery of economic forces, our steadily forming concep- 
tions of community well-being — these constitute social assets 
fundamental to all other forms of social evolution and in all 
of these we have played our part as explorers, inventors and 
master builders. 

It is now our opportunity and our obligation so to organize 
existing educational and other agencies of culture that here too 
the American people may be strong and creative. The feet 
of many of our gifted young men and women, given right incen- 
tive, can be turned into the paths of humanistic leadership just 
as certainly as were those of creative men and women in the 
virile and forward looking epochs of the past 

But to achieve these results we must develop in the fields 
of liberal education the conditions which have made the 
American people originators in the spheres of politics, mechan- 
ical invention, and business organization. We must cease to 
make ourselves dependent on the past, except as we perceive its 
possible service to present and future. We must encourage our 
youth during their plastic years to look about them and for- 
ward in the world of vital realities for objectives, and to look 
within themselves for incentives to action. They must learn 
to adapt with caution, and not at all flatly to imitate the work 
of those who lived under conditions very unlike those which 
prevail today. They must learn that we live in an age as 
unlike those of Athens or Rome or 15th century Florence, as 
are the topography and climate of the Mediterranean shores 
unlike the great geographic reaches and tremendous meteoro- 
logical alternations of our own continent. 



158 SELECTED ARTICLES 

The great war more than ever impresses upon us as a people 
that if we are to fulfill our destiny, we must cultivate origi- 
nality. We must in every possible way seek out the inventive 
spirit among us and give to that endless varieties of encourage- 
ment and positive incentive. We must cease to be worshippers 
of temporis acti. Our Golden Age lies in the future and in pros- 
pecting our way towards it, we can, when we are sufficiently 
mature, and. in exceptional instances, borrow even from the 
records of the journeyings of Xenophon or the quests of Ulysses. 
But we must borrow with restraint and discretion; otherwise, 
our aspiring youth will become bemired in the accretions of 
ancient history. 

The intellectual and spiritual assets wherewith the American 
people have entered the twentieth century have certainly never 
been equalled. Our economic control of nature has made us 
by far the wealthiest of nations in point of material resources, 
and these constitute the essential foundations, if we use them 
rightly, for the leisure, the appreciation and the education 
through which less tangible values are to be realized. Our one 
hundred million people constitute a population homogeneous 
and co-operative to an extent never yet equalled elsewhere. 

But the faith of our people in education and their disposition 
to support it is the greatest of these assets. In 1915 over 
1,500,000 of the adolescent youth of this American people were 
studying in our public and private secondary schools. Over 
250,000 young men and women were in our colleges. These 
hundreds of thousands represented the best of aspiring America. 
They are, to the extent that their schools and their surroundings 
are capable of inspiring them, eager to serve their country and 
time. They have acquired a kind of frankness and vital interest 
in realities that we think of as American. They are not easily 
subjugated to the traditional just because it is traditional, but 
neither are they at heart irreverent towards ancient or great 
things when the ancient is really significant and things alleged 
to be' great (for present or future) are such in reality. They 
do not reverence authority as such, for they see in submission 
to authority a means and not an end to the trulv democratic 
life. 

Utterly without foundation is the carelessly made charge 
that these young Americans are preoccupied with sordid ambi- 
tions for money or position. True, each boy or young man, 



LATIN AND GREEK 159 

and, equally, be it said to their credit, each girl and young 
woman, now looks forward to the day when he shall be able 
to render through some suitable vocation valuable service to the 
society which has nourished him. As a means to fullest 
serviceableness in this vocation, he desires and actively embraces 
at the right time, genuine vocational education; and in some 
collective capacity America is now disposed to expand oppor- 
tunities for vocational education as supplemental to the general 
or liberal education which our regular schools have heretofore 
offered. Much as we aspire to a due measure of leisure for all, 
we do not approve the ideal of a leisure class as such. We are 
too familiar with the close connections heretofore obtaining 
between leisure classes and a prevalent sensual aestheticism and 
moral degeneracy. 

These clean-limbed, open-minded youth of ours — are we to 
believe that they have only inferior capacities for higher ideal- 
ism, for the development of that new humanism for which the 
twentieth century calls? It is the proper function of education 
to help face these adolescents towards the future. This is no 
static civilization of ours. We are not seeking to remain 
eternally on the same level. We have learned the inevitableness 
of change, of evolution, and we have begun to feel, if not 
yet clearly to perceive, the possibilities of controlled evolution. 

What is the problem before the educational institutions of 
America? It is, let us repeat, to provide on behalf of our 
youth, the genuine means of a liberal education that shall be 
adapted to our age, our people, our circumstances. What would 
the best of the Athenians of the age of Pericles do were they 
in our place today? Would they try to find in forgotten tongues 
and antiquated fragments of literature the culture, the idealism, 
the mental disciplines that will transform plastic youths into 
citizens strong to uphold the state, to advance up the slopes of 
intellectual inquiry and of appreciation of the possibilities of 
conscious co-operative direction of social forces towards the 
higher goals that the purposeful discovery of the future will 
reveal to us? 

Let us first try to interpret what is undoubtedly in America 
today a very well-developed, even if only partially articulate, 
spirit of humanism — using that term in a legitimately modern- 
ized sense. It is not possible for us to locate the gods behind 
the summit of Mt. Olympus. To us they are abroad in our 



160 SELECTED ARTICLES 

own land and among our own people, and the effects of their 
wills are everywhere manifest in our own day. In many of the 
most important matters of life our attitude and outlook are 
almost inconceivably different from those of the Greeks and 
Romans. Slavery and all other forcible subjugations of the 
body and spirit of man, not required for the general social 
well-being, have become things abhorrent. Moral degradation, 
poverty, and all the other sources and concomitants of low 
efficiency, of undemocratic competition, and of persisting unhap- 
piness, are steadily being repudiated by the social conscience 
of our time. More keenly than ever do we perceive the need- 
less horrors entailed by aggressive war, the disease-like char- 
acter of crime and immorality, and the social wastage resulting 
from lack of knowledge and skill. A constantly increasing 
proportion of our people are steadily striving towards the day 
when within our borders may be found a vast and a thriving 
population, keenly appreciative of all the sources of light and 
fine sentiment that help to make life richer and purer. To the 
attainment of these conditions we more than ever perceive 
the need of originality, of science, of the development of the 
best humanistic ideals and means. 

We begin to understand our responsibilities for developing 
types of citizenship that Greece or Rome could not possibly 
conceive. It is our conviction that in a democracy, it belongs 
to all to assure to each the right to be socially efficient in all 
ways — culturally and morally, no less than physically and voca- 
tionally; and to enforce the performance by each of the duties 
which inevitably attend and complement rights. America sets 
the world high example in its persistent demands for increas- 
ingly wholesome family life, a better position for women, a 
fair start in life for all children. We are striving towards the 
time when in a purposeful way we may use all forms of fine 
art to the fullest extent that is possible in our day and genera- 
tion as instruments of control, development, enrichment of life. 
We certainly see much farther into the things of society than 
did or could our Greek or Judean or Roman or Teutonic fore- 
bears. We have now the means of developing, as they could 
not, things of the mind and things of the spirit. 

The new aims and methods will have to be developed in 
large part experimentally by educators who are well grounded 
in psychology and sociology. It is improbable that these experi- 



LATIN AND GREEK 161 

menters will fail to make full use of the valuable materials to 
be found in existing customs. Like the Pasteurs, Edisons, and 
Lincolns who, in other fields have wrought to new achieve- 
ments, they will gladly take from past practice or surviving 
custom the light that will help them on their way. All they 
ask is that their efforts be not blocked by vested interests 
and protected faiths. There is no credit to a civilized society 
in allowing prejudice and blind conservatism to visit death on 
a Socrates, ignomy on a Columbus, and disheartening obstruc- 
tion on a Pasteur. The experimental schools of tomorrow — 
and we must and shall have scores of them — ought to be given 
the freest possible scope to develop and test new and varied 
objectives and the means of realizing them. 

In a few essential respects, it is certainly even now prac- 
ticable for the student of modern education to predict some 
probable developments in the new liberal education. 

For the adolescent youth the processes of that education 
will involve reasonable amounts of the sharpest and sternest 
discipline — discipline of powers of bod}', of mind, and of moral 
character. But the youth himself will certainly be an appre- 
ciative and informed party as regards the ends of these disci- 
plines. He will not usually need to be driven in fear, or be 
invited to proceed in blind faith, because the valid worth of 
that which he must do will be a matter of generally understood 
demonstration. Like the Athenian youth whom we delight to 
recall, he will be trained, and trained hard if necessary, in 
those powers that have a visibly functional place in society 
as it is today or will be tomorrow. No longer will he be 
obliged, in the name of an obsolete pedagogy, to subject him- 
self to disciplines which, like the nostrums of mediaeval 
medicine, could rarely be taken by intelligent persons except 
in a spirit of uncertainty and misgiving. 

We are indeed learning to be ashamed of that devotion to 
educational "simples" which in our secondary education deluded 
us into thinking that a year or two of work with algebra and 
geometry by adolescents who would later make no vocational 
use of the knowledge acquired, or four years of indifferent 
study of a classical language, with its resulting meagre grasp 
of literary selection, read often with the furtive aid of ponies, 
can give for our day and generation the foundations of the 
powers which we idealize as intellectual discipline. We are 



162 SELECTED ARTICLES 

learning the futilities of that misleading and mechanical peda- 
gogy based upon a metaphysical and unscientific psychology 
which thinks to find in Latin and algebra intellectual philoso- 
pher's stones — to find in the mummified studies, quite divorced 
from all the realities of mind, spirit and body as they belong 
to our day and generation, precious means of nurture for mind 
and spirit. 

But the new liberal education will achieve only part of its 
results through the rigorous processes of hard discipline. It 
will provide also for many forms of growth through appeals to 
native interest, ambition, and instinctive good will. It will 
discover a pedagogy suited to the easy evoking and establishing 
of appreciations and ideals of approved worth. It is a wide- 
spread error of educators of the older type that schools rated 
good by current standards develop appreciation, tastes and 
ideals generally through the exercises of the classroom. This 
happens occasionally for the rare pupil under an average teacher 
and for many pupils under the exceptional teacher — that one 
teacher out of a thousand whose native genius can make even 
mathematics or Latin fascinating. But these finer qualities 
are much more often the by-products of the school life, the 
residual effects of play, social intercourse, and miscellaneous 
reading. The secondary school of the future will have a splen- 
did opportunity to extend and render more effective these forms 
of education of which the disciplinarian and taskmaster knows 
little and often cares less. A new type of schoolmaster must 
arise who can comprehend the significance in true cultural 
education of self-inspired work, leisurely development of tastes 
and abiding interests, and the richness of inspired social inter- 
course. 

Much light is now being shed on the problems of developing 
a functioning liberal education through the progress recently 
made in defining the ends and means of effective vocational 
education. Heretofore, all education except the vocational 
education designed to prepare for a few professions, has been 
vaguely assumed to "fit for life" — in the vocational no less 
than in the cultural and civic sense. Faculties of liberal arts 
colleges have solemnly defended the thesis "a college education 
pays" when business men, moved only by considerations of 
vocational efficiency, have challenged them. That a college 
education might well "pay" on grounds wholly other than voca- 



LATIN AND GREEK 163 

tional — and pay both the individual in culture and the other 
abiding satisfactions of life, as well as society in the higher 
type of citizen produced — should be a highly defensible thesis. 
But endless confusion' results when the objectives of vocational 
education and of liberal education are confused, or when it is 
assumed that the same means and methods will serve equally 
the ends of each. Vocational education in any properly delimited 
meaning of the words must have its processes, its means and 
methods strictly determined by the requirements of a known 
calling — and in the modern world these tend to proliferate and 
multiply along lines of specialization to an almost indefinite 
extent. 

Fortunately, we now see that we cannot effectively "voca- 
tionalize" education by offering in a high school or college a 
few elective studies or courses of an academic nature, with a 
slight accompaniment of laboratory illustration or practice. 
We have been attempting this in numberless cases with agri- 
cultural, industrial and commercial education — and even with 
home economics, journalism, business administration, teaching 
and social work. Only recently are we coming to perceive 
the great wastefulness and futility of it all. We are certainly 
destined soon to have a system of vocational schools, the vesti- 
buled approaches to the thousands of vocations now found in 
civilized society, but these schools will be as definitely differ- 
entiated from schools of general education as are now colleges 
of law, medicine, dentistry and military leadership. We may 
expect then that the functions properly belonging to schools 
not vocational in purpose will be revealed more clearly. With 
this knowledge, we can proceed to devise the most effective 
general or liberalizing education for those thousands who must 
or will close their general school in their fourteenth or fifteenth 
year; for those other thousands, more fortunately situated, 
who can give from one to four precious years to the liberal 
education offered by the secondary school before embarking 
on the study or practice of a specific vocation ; and also for that 
minority who usually combine much native ability with fortu- 
nate home conditions who aspire to a "college degree" before 
taking up the study of a profession. Here lie our opportunities 
to differentiate the ends and to determine the means of genuine 
liberal education. 

Among its larger objectives this liberal education must 



164 SELECTED ARTICLES 

develop and conserve for present and future generations in 
those who are to lead, attitudes of intelligent hopefulness, and 
faiths in human improvement and all that we call progress. 
Toward other peoples and toward peoples of different qual- 
ities in our midst, it must stand for increase in sympathetic 
understanding and mutual helpfulness. As regards the great 
social inheritance of knowledge, customs, and institutions which 
we have acquired from the past, its spirit should be appreciative 
and discriminating, based on the conviction that some things, 
and some things only, of that inheritance have a vital, a func- 
tional significance for the present and the future. 

Among the more specific results of a better liberal education; 
we trust that the men and women in the future will exhibit 
a finer and stronger command of our wonderful mother tongue 
than is now the case. A good command of the vernacular is 
indeed among the vague ideals of our schools of liberal educa- 
tion now, but the means to their realization of this are seriously 
ineffective. We have every right to expect the discovery of 
educational means whereby education toward desirable mastery 
of English can steadily be improved. There exist beliefs — 
shall I say superstitious beliefs (certainly they rest on no 
adequate evidence) — that study of one or more alien tongues 
is a highly desirable, if not necessary, condition of sound 
attainments in the vernacular. But with English steadily 
evolving toward becoming a world language, we can have 
confidence that a fine command of it is possible under right 
methods of training, even to those who have secured no power 
over another language. 

It will readily be understood that well-developed insights 
into, and appreciation of, English literature must also count as 
an indispensable element in the liberal education of all our young 
men and women. But this is not to be interpreted as including 
only study of those portions of English literature which are 
held to be classics. Too often the older vernacular literature, 
like the ancient literatures in other languages, possesses no 
functional value in inspiring youth to seek to interpret and to 
share in the control of the social and cultural forces of the 
twentieth century. We must include appreciations, under- 
standings and evaluations of all that literature which is each 
year in process of being made — and which, in a collective way, 
often voices the aspirations and the forming social attitudes 



LATIN AND GREEK 165 

of the peoples and times in which we live. Of course, at present 
we know little of the best means and methods for the direction 
to such study; but they are certainly discoverable. 

Next in importance to the English language and English 
literature as means of liberal education, we should place the 
social sciences, as these can be adapted to lay secure founda- 
tions of insight and ideals for good citizenship and fine human 
aspiration. But here again we must discard the traditions that 
have heretofore bound us to the ancient and the remote. His- 
tory, that great encyclopedic massing of data for the social 
sciences, must be made a subject of reference, not something to 
be studied for its own sake in chronological order by those 
youths who are laying the foundations for genuine humanistic 
culture. Students must first acquire concrete experience and 
definite knowledge through vital contact with the significant 
realities of the living present; then, as occasion offers, and needs 
of interpretation and perspective arise, they will be turned 
toward those things in history that demonstrably do function 
in better appreciation or understanding of the things of today, 
tomorrow, and next century. The range and variety of prob- 
lems to be solved by the citizen of a progressive democracy in 
the twentieth century are great indeed; and that can be no 
true culture, no true humanistic learning, which does not with 
sureness of aim and precision of method inspire and train the 
adolescent for their solution. 

Few will dispute the claim that in a modern scheme of 
liberal education a large place should also be given to natural 
science. The science subjects now found in our secondary 
schools and, to a large extent, in our liberal arts colleges, have 
rarely contributed in any genuine way to culture. They have 
suffered somewhat from the opposition of the former defenders 
of the classics but still more from their misguided friends who 
would, on the one hand, make them Cinderellas in the interest 
of vocational competency or else sharp drillmasters of "scien- 
tific method" and the mental discipline supposed to be derived 
from an intellectual "cure-all." Wholly new objectives and 
wholly new methods are needed in natural science teaching. 
Some successful experiments pointing ways to these are to be 
found even now. No one awake to the larger possibilities of 
liberal education need doubt that the natural sciences — those 
sources of insight and aspiration that have largely made the 



i66 SELECTED ARTICLES 

twentieth century, for good or for ill, what it is — can yet be 
made vital means of liberal education. 

There remain the fine arts of music, painting, and sculpture. 
Our schemes of so-called liberal education give little or no place 
to these today. But should not purposive development of 
taste and insight here be given prominence in any generous 
project for liberal education? Certainty discriminating and 
catholic appreciation of these fine arts constitute a large element 
in culture as best understood and defined. No less, certainly, 
when once the valid objectives of a functioning liberal education 
shall have been determined, we shall find appreciative studies 
of the fine arts given high rank among the means to that end. 

What do we desire with reference to the classics in our 
schools and colleges ? Only this : that they shall be accorded 
no special favors, given no artificially protected position. We 
wish the field of higher education to be made as open as possible 
to the end that in its very effort to devise, invent, and create 
the means of a liberal education adapted to the needs of our 
time and opportunities, we shall not be hampered by the dead 
hands of useless tradition, the old inertias and controls of an 
age that saw in a static civilization the highest of all earthly 
glories. 

Do we wish to prevent the study of the Latin, and especially 
of the Greek, language and literatures? Assuredly not! For 
those with genuine interests in such studies, every facility 
should be afforded in schools and colleges that can obtain 
enough students to justify the expense. And we hope that, 
given fewer students and the genuinely interested, such studies 
might become, for a few at any rate, genuine wellsprings of 
interest, appreciation, and insight — something which is far from 
being the case at present. 

We earnestly desire that the great languages and literatures 
of Greece and of Rome, and of every other age that has enriched 
the world, shall be the objects from time to time of careful , 
inquiry and developed appreciation by persons mature enough 
to serve as interpreters of these treasures to each succeeding 
generation. We believe that from age to age in the light of our 
own added knowledge and developed experience, these languages 
and literatures will still continue to make their contributions, 
as will, in somewhat similar measure, ancient Irish lore, the 
sagas of the European northwest, the philosophy of India, the 
religious writings of Confucius, and even the mythology of 



\ 



LATIN AND GREEK 167 

our own North American Indians. To none of these sources 
of inspiration can a country like ours in its future evolution 
be completely indifferent. From time to time, we shall expect 
aspiring spirits to visit these faraway lands and to bring back 
some treasures fit for the adornment of our temples. For 
these purposes, however, we shall require no compulsory study 
of these ancient languages in our secondary schools or our 
colleges. Much more profitable will it be for us that individuals 
themselves take the initiative from time to time in making the 
necessary explorations. 

In fact, a large part of the liberal education offered, even in 
the secondary school, will consist in the deep plumbing of a few 
intellectual or aesthetic fields in which the candidate has native 
interest and power. Under a yet to be developed system of 
educational guidance, each learner will be induced, as part of 
this liberal education, to select some one field of culture and to 
make of that a life interest. Among these might well be : 
Greek language and literature; 17th century English literature; 
modern Japanese language, history, and literature ; violin music ; 
architecture ; "natural history" of a given region ; some branch 
of social science ; eugenics. 

The foreign languages, ancient and modern, and mathe- 
matics^-what place will finally be reserved for these subjects 
which, despite frequent allegation to the contrary, now compose 
the heavier part of practically all programs of secondary 
education designed as preparation for college, soley because of 
their supposed value as apparatus for mental gymnastics? It 
is perhaps too early to say with confidence. Algebra and geom- 
etry will unquestionably hold a strong position in the prevoca- 
tional training of those who have reasonable expectations of 
entering vocations using mathematics as an important instru- 
ment. A few other persons may be expected to elect them 
through sheer native interest in the special intellectual activity 
and the particular insight which such study affords. We shall 
hope and expect, too, that in addition to those who study for 
probable vocational use, a modern language, others may be 
induced to give the toil and enthusiasm required to beget that 
mastery of French, or Japanese, or Russian, or Spanish, which 
shall enable the fortunate possessors thereof, like generous 
amateur musicians, to be sources of appreciation and insight 
in circles where they move, as well as translators — in the 
larger sense of the term — of the good will and intellectual riches 



168 SELECTED ARTICLES 

of the peoples whose culture has become accessible to them 
through the mastered language. In somewhat similar process 
may we also expect, as elsewhere suggested, fine spirits to 
prepare themselves, from time to time, to journey intellectually 
in quest of treasure still to be found behind the linguistic walls 
of Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, Erse, and Inca writings. 

To make these things possible in education, much will yet 
be needed of courage, faith, inventiveness, and labor. But 
these are even now extensively enlisted in support of many 
progressive movements and experimental developments. One 
immediate step that will help much is an educational declara- 
tion of independence which will release the grip of one of the 
few surviving relics of old-world tradition — a declaration of 
independence from the grip of the Dead Hand of Latin. 



SOME EXPERIMENTAL DATA ON THE 
VALUE OF STUDYING FOREIGN ' 
LANGUAGES 1 

The value of studying foreign languages, aside from the 
direct use of the modern languages, has been very much over- 
estimated in some quarters and perhaps equally underestimated 
in other quarters. The controversy over the amounts of pure 
intellectual discipline of the various branches of instruction has 
been the warmest in the field of languages, particularly the 
ancient ones. As a matter of fact, however, the controversy 
could be just as animated in the field of the sciences, when one 
recalls the distorted claims of discipline made for them in certain 
quarters. 

This article will present some definite data on the amount 
of disciplinary or derived value of certain aspects of studying 
foreign languages. It is not claimed to present a complete 
measure of one or of all phases of such study, but it is certain 
that definite objective facts and measurements are far superior 
to individual opinions based on haphazard instances. 

Scholastic records of students presenting different languages 
for college entrance. — The first problem considered was a com- 
parison of the scholastic records of university students who 
had entered the university with two to four years of Latin with 

1 Prof. Daniel Starch, School Review. 23:697-703. December, 1915. 



LATIN AND GREEK 169 

the records of those who had entered with two to four years of 
German. The average grade for the four years of college 
work of each of the graduates of the College of Letters and 
Science of the year 1910 was computed. The median mark of 
the 104 students who had entered the university with Latin 
was 85.7 and the median mark of the 45 students who had 
entered with German was 84.0. Hence the difference between 
the two groups is only 1.7 points. 

The explanation for this small advantage of Latin over 
German may be sought in three directions : First, the disciplinary 
difference between Latin and German is either zero or very 
small. Second, whatever difference they may have produced 
originally may have tended to disappear in the four years of 
college work, owing to the freedom of electives, pursuit of 
different courses, disciplinary effect of other studies, etc. Third, 
the small difference in scholastic records may be due to an 
original difference in the students themselves, owing to the 
possibility that one language may attract a better class of pupils 
than another. It seems very probable that if any real difference 
exists it is due chiefly to the third reason. 

To determine what part, if any, the first two factors played, 
the average grade of each of the 738 Freshmen of the year 
1909-10 was computed. The median grade of the 416 Freshmen 
who had entered with Latin was 82.4 and that of the 322 Fresh- 
men who had entered with German was 81.0. Hence the 
difference between the two groups was only 1.4 points, or 
approximately the same as that for the graduates. 

The next problem was to compare the grades of these two 
groups in specific subjects as follows: 
Median grade in modern languages of 362 Freshmen who 

had entered with Latin 84.5 

Median grade in modern languages of 293 Freshmen who 

had entered with German 82.3 

Difference in favor of the Latin group 2.2 

Median grade in Freshman English of 54 students who 
had entered with Latin only 83.9 

Median grade in Freshman English of 97 students who 
had entered with German only 82.7 

Difference in favor of the Latin group 1.2 



170 



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Median grade in first-year French of 27 Freshmen who 
had entered with Latin only 81.5 

Median grade in first-year French of 34 Freshmen who 
had entered with German only 82.0 

Difference in favor of the German group 0.5 

The differences again are very small. The claim of language 
teachers, so commonly made, that beginners in French who 
have had Latin are much superior to those who have not had 
Latin, or that students in English with previous training in 
Latin are superior to those without such training is ill founded. 
It is another example, so common in educational thinking, of 
generalizing from striking, isolated cases. What differences 
do exist are due primarily to the selection of students. The 
pupils who entered the university with Latin were on the average 
better, but only slightly better, pupils before they studied Latin 
than those who undertook German. The traditions in many 
high schools have been such that somewhat better pupils have 
tended to select Latin. 

Another tabulation (Table I) was made to show the scholar- 
ship records of Freshmen in relation to the amount of foreign 
languages studied, irrespective of what the languages were. 

TABLE I 



Years of Foreign 
Languages 


Number of 
Students 


Median Grade in All 
Freshman Studies 




25 

224 

i9S 
155 


81.8 




81.9 


3—4 

5 — 6 


83-05 
84.0 







Effect of studying Latin upon the size of one's English 
vocabulary. — The next problem was to measure the extent to 
which a pupil's English vocabulary is increased through the study 
of Latin. The method employed for determining the size of 
a person's English vocabulary has been described elsewhere and 
hence will not be discussed here. 1 Suffice it to say that the 
method employed measures the percentage of the entire Eng- 
lish vocabulary, as well as the approximate absolute number 
of words whose meaning a given person knows sufficiently 
well to use them correctly. The test was made with 189 

1 D- Starch, Educational Measurements. Macmillan. 



LATIN AND GREEK 171 

university students and with 46 Juniors in the Madison High 
School. 

Per cent 
Size of English vocabulary of 139 university students who 

had studied Latin 60.9 

Size of English vocabulary of 50 university students who 

had not studied Latin 58.2 

Size of English vocabulary of 14 high-school Juniors, who 

had studied Latin 54.7 

Size of English vocabulary of 32 high-school Juniors who 

had not studied Latin 50.2 

The differences between the Latin and the no-Latin groups 
are surprisingly small. One of the reasons commonly urged 
for the study of Latin is its tendency to increase the student's 
English vocabulary. The difficulty in the situation lies in the 
fact that, while many English words are derived from Latin 
sources, the meanings of the English words are often so warped 
or distantly derived that it is necessary to learn the specific 
meanings. Simply to recognize that "boaconstrictor" contains 
the root constringere, "to draw together," will not teach a pupil 
that it means a certain kind of reptile. So far as the root- 
meaning is concerned, the word might have been applied to 
scores of things that contract. This point was brought out 
forcibly by the students on whom the test was made. The 
Latin students recognized in many instances the presence of 
Latin roots in the English words used in the test, but they could 
not be sure of the specific meanings without having definitely 
ascertained them. In many instances they would ascribe, by 
inference from the root-words, entirely erroneous meanings. 
Nevertheless the study of Latin does produce an appreciably 
larger English vocabulary. This advantage becomes less in 
university students, with whom it is partly counterbalanced 
by the increase in vocabulary due to wider experience. 

Effect of studying foreign languages upon knowledge of 
English grammar and upon correctness of usage of English. — 
The final problem was to ascertain to what extent the study of 
foreign languages increases a pupil's knowledge of English 
grammar and to what extent, if at all, it increases correct use 
of the English language. The methods by which correctness 
of usage and technical knowledge of grammar were measured 

1 The Measurement of Ability in Reading, Writing, Spelling and Eng- 
lish. The College Book Store, Madison, Wisconsin. 



172 



SELECTED ARTICLES 



have been described elsewhere. 1 In brief, the test for usage 
consisted of a set of one hundred sentences, each of which 
was stated in two ways. The task of the pupil consisted in 
indicating the correct forms. Technical knowledge of grammar 
was measured by certain tests involving the designation of 
parts of speech, cases, tenses, and modes. These tests were 
made upon 54 university Juniors and Seniors and 146 high- 
school pupils. They gave the results shown in Table II, in which 
the scores for knowledge of grammar are the numbers of the 
parts of speech, cases, tenses, and modes indicated correctly 
in a specified period of time, and the scores for correctness 
of usage are the numbers of sentences designated correctly in 
a specified period of time. 

TABLE II 



Years of Foreign 1 
Languages 



Number of 
Students 



Average Scores 

for Knowledge 

of Grammar 



Average Scores 

for Correctness 

of Usage 



UNIVERSITY JUNIORS AND SENIORS 



2—5 • ■ . 
6—9... 

10 — 15. 

o 

8 weeks 

1 year. , 

2 vears. 

3 years. 




81.5 
71. 1 

75-5 
75-7 



HIGH-SCHOOL PUPILS 



SO 
18 
30 
27 




33.2 

43-o 
43-4 
45-9 
47-7 



UNIVERSITY JUNIORS AND SENIORS 



Years of Latin 










IS 

11 

14 

9 


45-8 
56. 1 
57-5 
61.8 


70.9 
75-7 
74-3 
76.1 









Another test for correctness of usage, consisting of sentences 
like the set of one hundred, but arranged in the order of 
increasingly difficult steps, was made on another group of 146 



LATIN AND GREEK 



173 



university students and 92 high-school pupils. This test yielded 
the highest steps passed. The higher the score is, the greater 
is the ability of using English correctly. 

These tables agree in showing one very significant result, 
namely, that the study of foreign languages materially increases 
"s knowledge of English grammar but only slightly 



increases his ability in the correct usage of the English lan- 
guage. Notice, for example, the- upper part of Table II. The 
students who had 10 to 15 years of foreign languages made a 
score in .grammatical knowledge of 63. as compared with a 
score of 47.8 made by the students who had 2 to 5 years of 
foreign languages, a difference of 32.6 per cent in favor of the 
former group. For correctness of usage, the corresponding 
difference is only 6.4 per cent. The two students with no 
foreign languages made high scores because they were exception- 
ally good students, but they are too few in number to be 
considered. The high-school pupils show a gain in grammatical 
knowledge of 37.5 per cent from the 8-week group to the 3-year 
group and a gain in usage of only 10.9 per cent. The 12 pupils 
with no foreign language made low scores because they were ex- 
ceptionally poor pupils. This is indicated by their low scholarship 
records, by the fact that many were over-age, by the fact that they 

TABLE III 



Years of Latin 


Number of Pupils 


Average Scores 


HIGH-SCHOOL PUPILS 




47 
99 




1 6 ' 








UNIVERSITY STUDENTS 




78 
14 


9.0 
9-3 







avoided the foreign languages, and also by the large difference 
between their scores and those of the 50 pupils who were just 
beginning foreign languages. Eight weeks of foreign languages 
could hardly have produced such a big gain. Their higher 
scores must be due to a difference in original nature. The same 
facts are brought out by the comparison for Latin alone. The 
gain of the 5-or-more-year group over the o-year group in 



174 SELECTED ARTICLES 

grammatical knowledge is 34.9 per cent and in correct usage 
only 7.3 per cent. Latin obviously has no advantage over any 
other foreign language in increasing grammatical knowledge 
or usage of English. 

Incidentally the implication may also be pointed out that 
knowledge of grammar has very little effect upon correct usage. 
The large increases in grammatical knowledge are accompanied 
by only very small increases in correct usage. Correct usage 
is primarily a matter of establishing correct habits of speech, 
and grammatical knowledge is useful only in so far as it helps 
to establish such habits. Apparently imitation and repetition of 
correct expression are far more efficacious in forming correct 
habits than grammatical knowledge. The recent tendency to 
reduce the time devoted to formal grammar and to postpone 
the study of it to later years is in accord with these findings. 

The argument often advanced for the study of foreign 
languages, and particularly for Latin, that they are a great aid 
in the use and comprehension of English is unfounded. Argu- 
ments of this kind are unnecessary. Why should we not study 
Latin on its own account as a language and as a guide to a 
literature of its own? Its aid, as well as that of any other 
foreign language, in facilitating the use of English is very small. 
Why not recognize this as a fact? If you wish to know English, 
study English, but not via Latin or some other language. If 
you wish to know Latin, study Latin for its own sake primarily, 
an end sufficiently worthy in itself. The aid of one language 
in the study of another is only incidental and unimportant, 
at least so far as present methods of teaching foreign languages 
go. The figures presented should not be interpreted as an 
argument against foreign languages or particularly against 
Latin, but rather against certain assumed disciplinary, trans- 
ferred, or derived benefits. 

Summary. — The scholastic records of students in the univer- 
sity entering with Latin are only to a slight and negligible 
extent better than those of students entering with German. 
Likewise, the scholastic records in modern languages, either 
beginning or advanced, or in English, of students entering with 
Latin are only to a very slight extent better than those of 
students entering with German. This slight difference is prob- 
ably due to an inherent difference in the students rather than to 
a difference produced by these languages. 



LATIN AND GREEK 175 

The English vocabulary of pupils who had studied Latin was 
2..1 per cent larger than the vocabulary of those who had not 
studied Latin in the case of university students, and 4.5 per cent 
larger in the case of high-school pupils. 

The study of foreign languages materially increases a 
student's knowledge of English grammar, but only slightly 
increases his ability to use English correctly. 



EDUCATION AS MENTAL DISCIPLINE 1 



When doubts are suggested as to the value of certain time- 
honored subjects included in the elementary and secondary 
curriculum, one is told that the subjects in question are valuable 
because they 'train the mind.' 'Training the mind' is. therefore 
a phrase which expresses a definite educational theory — the 
theory, namely, that the most important function of the school 
is to discipline the mental faculties so that in after life they 
will be serviceable instruments ready for effective use. The 
faculties to be thus trained are memory, reason, imagination, 
observation. People who believe in 'training the mind,' or in 
'formal discipline,' which is the same thing technically expressed, 
almost invariably hold that the time-honored subjects — Latin, 
algebra, geometry, and so on — best serve this purpose. They 
believe that subjects which will themselves probably never 
be used furnish the most effective mental gymnastics to use an 
other favorite expression; that memory developed by learning 
Latin grammar, observation practiced in distinguishing moods 
and tenses, reason practiced in algebraic or geometrical opera- 
tions, are so many weapons, in fighting trim, ready to be put to 
such uses as arise out in the world subsequently. The theory of 
mental discipline or formal discipline is therefore the bulwark 
of conventional or traditional education. 

The opposing conception may be described as education on 
the basis of content. Education on the basis of content endeavors 
to equip the pupil with a varied body of properly-ordered mate- 
rial, which will serve his purposes, stimulate his interests, and 
engage his growing powers. It selects things to teach, not prima- 

1 Abraham Flexner, Atlantic Monthly. 119:452-64. April, 1917. 



176 SELECTED ARTICLES 

rily for the purpose of training the mind, but because the things 
are in themselves useful, satisfying, or inspiring — because, in a 
word, they serve some purpose which is valued either by society or 
by the individual, be the purpose material, utilitarian, artistic, 
spiritual, or what not. Education by content does not deny 
that there is such a thing as training. Indeed, having once 
chosen a particular subject or content, it insists that this content 
should be so presented as to develop the maximum power and 
interest. But it entirely disbelieves in the training of general 
faculties — a general memory faculty, a general reasoning faculty, 
a general faculty of observation — on which the theory of 
formal discipline sets such great store. It holds that really 
no such faculties exist, and hence that they cannot be trained. 
There are instead — so content-education believes — many kinds 
of memory, many kinds of reasoning power, many kinds of 
observing faculty; and all we know of training is that these 
various abilities are within limits improvable through exercise. 
Content-education holds, therefore, that, if the mind is to deal 
with varied, yet definite and specific experiences, problems, and 
activities, education or training should concern itself with such 
experiences, problems, and activities — not with totally different 
and very limited problems and activities. Hence the emphasis 
on a content which is in range and quality fairly representative 
of the world as a whole and of the mind in all its varied 
interests and capacities. 1 

American education is, on the whole, dominated by the 
former of the two conceptions I have briefly characterized — 
that is, by the theory of formal discipline. Children study 
most of their present subjects, not because they serve essential 
purposes or represent significant experiences, but because they 
are supposed to 'train the mind.' From time to time in recent 
years, to be sure, content-studies have crept in or been forced 
in. But it would be a mistake to suppose that this indicates 
a deliberate abandonment of the disciplinary line. On the 
contrary, the new content-studies have largely shared the fate 
of the rest of the curriculum — they have been taught so as to 
'train the mind.' Their presence does not therefore indicate 
that the content-theory is crowding out the theory of mental 
discipline. 

1 For an admirable discussion of this whole question, the reader is 
referred to Professor Ernest C. Moore's What is Education? 



LATIN AND GREEK 177 

The frankest and most unqualified embodiment of the disci- 
plinary conception of education is the preparatory school. I 
single it out in this discussion because, particulary in the East, 
it represents the kind of training given those who qualify for 
admission to college — those, that is, who want to get a higher 
education. It is true that increasing numbers enter college, in 
the East as in other sections, from public and private high 
schools which do not describe themselves as preparatory schools. 
Nevertheless high schools preparing students for college have 
been directly and indirectly compelled to approximate the pre- 
paratory school in the course of study and in the way in which 
the course of study is handled. Thus the influence of the Amer- 
ican college works strongly in the direction of fastening on the 
secondary school the disciplinary conception of education. I pro- 
pose in this paper to consider this procedure ; in a subsequent 
one I shall try to convince college authorities that they ought to 
promote an experiment with the alternative conception. 

The preparatory school devotes itself, then, to mental 
discipline. It seeks to train the mind by forcing it to do intel- 
lectual tasks mostly of little inherent interest, but of gradually 
increasing difficulty. Some pupils do, indeed, get interested ; 
at times the personality of the teacher will irradiate the instruc- 
tion ; at times the study takes on the character of. a game which 
minds of a certain type like to puzzle out. Again, it happens 
that in every class certain pupils do with ease and almost intui- 
tively the tasks that are defended because of the deliberate 
intellectual effort that they are supposed to require and to train. 
I have never heard any believer in mental discipline explain 
what becomes of the theory in the case of such students — the 
students, I mean, who see through the thing in this rather 
effortless fashion. We need not, however, worry about them ; 
for the number of those who succeed easily because of interest 
in the game or because of native capacity is not large enough 
to upset the contention that most pupils find intellectual tasks of 
the type employed difficult and unappealing. To consider what 
sort of training — intellectual and moral — these pupils get out of 
their hard and dull tasks, is the main purpose of this paper. 

The preparatory school curriculum is made up of languages, 
abstract mathematics, history, and a bit of science. On its 
face, it is predominantly a thing of words and symbols. The 
mind that it trains is therefore necessarily the word-mind— 



178 SELECTED ARTICLES 

the mind that has to do with words, the mind that can be reached 
through words, and only in so far as it has to do with words 
or can be reached through words. If there be people — as there 
surely are — who think more or less in materials, in colors, in 
sounds, in images, in action, the word-discipline of the prepara- 
tory school is not for them, in so far as they think or act in 
those media. Now, of course, no education is going to dis- 
pense with words and symbols, and the best possible education 
is going to make a large use of them. But words and symbols 
are not used in the preparatory school discipline as they are 
used in daily life. In daily life words are used to suggest mean- 
ings or ideas. The preparatory school, on the contrary, uses 
words and symbols, not primarily to transmit a meaning, but, 
without emphasis upon meaning, as a method of disciplining the 
will, the reason, the power of analysis. The other type of 
school I mentioned — the content type — would employ words and 
symbols as keys to living subjects, as ways of summarizing 
experience, as stimuli and challenges to action. Not so the 
preparatory school. The preparatory school employs words and 
symbols as formal instruments for disciplinary exercise. And, 
as we shall see, it treats pretty much all subjects in pretty 
much the same fashion. 

Let me make sure that I am understood when I say that 
the preparatory school curriculum or the college-entrance pro- 
gramme — call it which you please — is overwhelmingly a thing of 
words and symbols taught for formal ends. Note in the first 
place the prominence of language studies and the objects which 
the language studies subserve. Over one half the subjects 
offered are languages ; much more than one half the time of 
pupils in school and out of school goes to the study of lan- 
guages — to the study of languages, furthermore, which pupils 
do not learn and are not expected to learn. I say the languages 
are not learned ; no one expects them to be learned. They are 
taught, not for the sake of their meanings, not to be used in 
suggesting ideas, but as a means of discipline. 

Now consider what happens when a child studies, without 
learning, Latin and Greek. He commits to memory paradigms, 
conjugations, and vocabulary. What is the process? A 
mechanical remembering and identifying of arbitrary corres- 
pondents between mere words. Each particular ending in Latin 
equals something, or one of several somethings, in English ; 



LATIN AND GREEK 179 

each word in Latin equals something, or one of several some- 
things, in English. There is a list of cases with meaningless 
names to be arbitrarily accepted ; it is astonishing how glibly 
children learn to employ this incomprehensible terminology. 
It is no part of the child's business to ask why; it is, in the 
main, his business to take the thing on faith and to commit it 
to memory. Thus, a whole series of declensions is memorized : 
in the first declension, a long a is a symbol to be mechanically 
identified with what is called ablative singular, arum a symbol 
to be mechanically identified with genitive plural, and so on. 
Subsequently things called moods, voices, gerunds are accepted 
on the combined assurance of the printed page and of a teacher 
who treats this printed page with convincing gravity. Intelli- 
gence — on the child's part — is rarely involved; there is rarely 
anything for him to understand; there is rarely any stimulus to 
his wit or interest. It is, I repeat, a mechanical process which 
some children do readily and some do not — and there is an end 
of the matter. 

An enormous mass of such arbitrary material has to be 
taken aboard like so much lifeless freight — declensions, conjuga- 
tions, regular, irregular, with no end of equally arbitrary excep- 
tions. Nor does arbitrariness end when the grammar forms 
are learned; for the syntax is from the pupil's point of view, 
generally speaking, just as arbitrary, just as much a matter- 
of faith. He is told that ut means 'that,' — 'in order that,' or 
'so that' ; that when it means 'in order that' the negative is ne ; 
when it means 'so that,' the negative is non; once more, a 
mechanical set of correspondences, to be mechanically memorized 
and mechanically applied. So far as he is concerned, it might 
as well be the other way round or any old way round. No 
reaction which he can feel or perceive would follow the reversal. 
Where alternatives are open, the pupil usually fumbles or guesses ; 
some hapless children have a diabolical tendency to guess 
wrong — just as Mrs. Wiggs's children were carried irresistibly 
into an open rain-barrel, when with the slightest good fortune 
they might have avoided it. In such instances the teacher's dis- 
pleasure, evinced by a low mark, not some untoward experience 
with the rain-barrel, is the pupil's only way of knowing right 
from wrong. 

I do not, of course, mean to deny that now and then Latin 
and Greek can be made, and indeed are made, to convey a dis- 



i8o SELECTED ARTICLES 

tinction in meaning which the child may be brought to see is 
genuine — as, for example when the preposition in and ad are 
distinguished. But even if such opportunities were much more 
abundant than they are, they would not give to classical study 
the disciplinary virtue asserted for it. The content learned and 
the method by which it is learned go together; the child cannot 
acquire a method in vacuo with power to apply it afterwards 
to other situations that may arise. The child who learns to 
make a verbal distinction learns just that — and that is practically 
an end of the matter; he is not acquiring a generally applicable 
analytical skill. If the teacher happens to possess a wider 
interest in his classics and if in consequence his teaching is 
more or less vitalized thereby, the pupils profit by just so much. 
The subject is made just so much more real; its stimulating, 
engaging, or, if you prefer, disciplinary effect is increased by 
so much, and no more. The disciplinary theory, however, tends 
strongly to restrict the teacher's opportunity to develop his 
subject on these side lines. In any case, the scope of meaning 
or reality in operating with dead languages is as a pinpoint 
compared with vast arid stretches of formality or arbitrariness. 
For the most part, teacher and pupil operate, or, better, attempt 
to operate analytically on intellectual lines with empty, unreal 
symbols devoid of the breath of life. 

II 

One half the subjects of a curriculum based on the old- 
fashioned college-entrance requirements can thus be criticized 
for many pupils as mere juggling with words and symbols — a 
juggling which does not in the end hope or intend to be familiar 
enough with them to become unconscious of mechanism and 
conscious of the ideas which languages are meant to commun- 
icate. Nor is this failure to learn the language as a language re- 
garded by the preparatory school as a fair criticism ; for learning 
the language is not what the school aims at — so far, at least, as 
the avowed theory of the preparatory school goes. The school 
aims at mental discipline — and the reader is now in a position 
to judge how much and what kind of discipline most pupils get 
from the preparatory school language studies. Moreover, what- 
ever they get, there is no reason whatever to suppose that as 
discipline it goes beyond the particular abilities called into action 



LATIN AND GREEK 181 

by it. In this respect, the discipline got from learning Latin 
resembles the discipline got from playing chess. You train what 
you train. 

Mathematics is another formal subject, taught, mainly, not 
for the sake of imparting knowledge that is or can be used to 
serve some purpose or other, but taught, once more, because it 
is supposed to discipline a certain faculty — primarily the reason. 
In practice, if only teachers observed what happens, it might 
be perceived that algebra is learned, not as a rule by the exercise 
of anything that can be properly called reason, but passively, 
mechanically, just as Latin grammar and Latin syntax are 
for the most part learned. And just as the Latin student is 
reputed to be successful if he can reproduce what he has taken 
in, so the algebra student succeeds when he can mechanically 
perform the operations that the teacher or the book .performs. 
He is told that a 2 X& 3 = a s , while 20 X 3fl = 6a 2 ; and, more or 
less precariously, he comes to do the same thing himself. 
When negative or fractional exponents are reached, he is — as 
they say — 'drilled' until hazily and doubtfully he can carry out 
the same operation. A bit later, and in the same imitative 
fashion, he learns to apply the binomial theorem or to solve 
quadratics involving two unknown quantities in this way or 
that, according as they resemble this type or that. But through- 
out he is dealing with words and symbols through which he 
does not penetrate to the realities represented. 

Nor is the study illuminated by being brought to bear. Formal 
discipline does not require that ; as I pointed out in discussing 
Latin, the tendency is in the opposite direction. The disciplin- 
ary purpose narrows and impoverishes. Hence the preparatory 
school curriculum offers nothing in the way of science or indus- 
try which might relieve the teaching of mathematics of its uncom- 
promisingly abstract character, or might tend to mitigate farmal- 
ity by means of an occasional touch of reality. In consequence, 
save in rare instances, the student goes through a mechanical 
exercise to which he remains spiritually indifferent — an exercise 
which does not tap his interest or power, and which for that 
reason leaves him very much the person that it found him. 
Highly typical is the girl who made 83 per cent in algebra in the 
latest college-entrance examinations, after being "prepared" in 
one of the most successful preparatory schools in the East. 
Just before entering the examination, she ran through with 



182 SELECTED ARTICLES 

her father all the common quadratic types, glibly explaining 
the appropriate solution of each. It was a perfect performance — 
mechanically considered ; but when * it was finished and the 
subject dismissed, she suddenly broke out, 'Oh, by the way, 
father, what is a quadratic anyway?' Which reminds me of a 
keen little fellow who recently explained to his mother : 'You 
are not expected to understand algebra — only to do it.' Algebra 
then, like Latin and Greek, means the mechanical handling of 
symbols, in close imitation of set models. As a discipline it 
would at most train children to operate imitatively with form- 
ulae whose origin and function they do not appreciate. 

The theory of formal discipline is so pervasive that it has 
subdued other subjects which, it might be supposed, have and 
can have only content-value. How, for example, does the 
preparatory school teach history? In the first instance, the 
history selected is usually Greek and Roman, not modern — a 
choice which sacrifices at once the powerful motivation of the 
student's environment. Ancient history has, to be sure, its 
proper place in education, but ordinary schools have thought 
little as to what that place is. The choice of Greek and Roman 
history is, therefore, not a choice dictated by a sense of the 
value of content; still less is the treatment calculated to bring 
out content-value. The subject is presented just as formally 
as can be. The unit or symbol is larger, a paragraph, instead 
of a case or tense or formula; but words and symbols still. 
There is a textbook of Roman history in which things are 
boiled down to the form in which the pupil must absorb them 
with a view to their subsequent reproduction. Of the realities 
which these feeble paragraphs vainly attempt to portray, few 
obtain any grasp whatsoever. For the time being, a capable 
fellow can tell you the main features of the laws of Solon or 
the Licinian rogations. But the subject-matter was not chosen 
because of intrinsic interest and importance; and the teacher 
aims, not at cultivation of historic or civic interest, but at a 
neat and presentable formal achievement. One may well be 
puzzled as to what faculty is trained by this kind of exercise ; 
a recent authority tells us that it is 'memory, imagination, and 
social reasoning!' 

I mentioned science. In the last school-year, or the last 
but one, boys and girls whose faculties have for some eight to 
ten years been disciplined on case-endings, moods, rules of 



LATIN AND GREEK 183 

syntax, algebraic formulae, Euclidian demonstrations, Roman 
constitutions, and the like, are permitted to get a year of a 
chosen science — physics, or chemistry, or physiology. Well, 
tardily, to be sure, — but let us not be ungrateful, — the eager 
boy, itching by this time for a contact with real problems, his 
curiosity deadened, but not yet wholly dead, — here at last, he 
will have done with words and symbols ; he will come face 
to face with content, with phenomena. Not so, however. . Pre- 
paratory school science, like preparatory school language, pre- 
paratory school mathematics, preparatory school history, is 
intellectual in aspect, meagre in content, disciplinary in purpose. 
The child's normal scientific interest and activity are derived 
from the world of phenomena and objects in which he lives. 
In reference to that world, he is, as has been said, 'an animated 
interrogation point' : he wants knowledge of that world ; he 
strives to understand it and to do something with it. The 
content-teaching of science would heed these strong instincts ; 
and discipline, if we may use the term, would come because 
of the reality and variety of the efforts made. 

This would be science taught from the standpoint of content. 
The preparatory school, interested in discipline, selects a single 
science, — physics or chemistry, — presented in strictly logical or 
intellectual fashion, in a systematic, even if elementary, form ; 
and thereupon, the pupil studies bookishly described phenomena, 
experiments, and laws, with the same strong emphasis on 
memory, mechanism, and faith that is characteristic of his study 
of Latin and algebra. He gets in his physics and chemistry 
as little sense of the real phenomenal world as he gets sense 
of meanings when he studies Latin, or sense of uses when he 
studies algebra or geometry. And what faculties are disciplined? 
Why, the faculties of 'observation and concrete reasoning' ! 

Thus, our children study science, our children study history, 
just as they study German and French and Latin — not to gain 
insight or mastery or understanding, not because the subject- 
matter is a selected portion of their present or prospective 
experience in one way or another is going to make a 
difference to them, but for the purpose of disciplining faculties 
that do not exist, by means of exercises, the real disciplinary 
outcome of which remains uninvestigated. They do not study 
languages as a way of getting at and conveying ideas. They 
do not study history as a way of arousing and satisfying social 



184 SELECTED ARTICLES 

curiosity. They do not study science because they wonder at 
the world about them, or want to be able, so far as may be, to 
understand or control it. School science, is, therefore, as Dr. 
Wickliffe Rose once remarked, apt to be 'Latin under another 
name.' 



Ill 

I am at a loss to say just what the preparatory school Eng- 
lish course— or the college-entrance English requirements, which 
is the same thing — aims to accomplish. It may, perhaps, be 
fairly regarded as an attempted discipline in taste and expres- 
sion. As such, it is, of all the features that constitute the 
preparatory school programme, the most dismal failure. For the 
futility of conventional English teaching, in respect to both taste 
and expression, is precisely the point that strikes any observer, 
who, not being responsible for the teaching, is compelled to 
deal subsequently with the pupils who have passed through it. 
A university law school professor recently deplored, in conver- 
sation with me, the meagre vocabulary, feeble style, and paucity 
of ideas characteristic of the 'picked' students to whom his 
first professional courses were addressed. How could it be 
otherwise? The art of expression develops where there is 
something to say; but the preparatory school curriculum, and, 
most of all, the English course, disdains any content such as 
would give the pupil something to say, and, instead, devotes 
itself, as consistently as it can, to a 'discipline,' which bleaches 
out all subjects to a uniform deadly pallor. As for taste — taste 
is something to be developed, not something to be summarily 
forced upon the pupil. Why should the long-drawn-out analysis 
of dull, unsympathetic, and ill-adapted 'classics' like Comus, 
develop an ordinary pupil's taste? and why should a man or 
woman who teaches English for twenty years be compelled 
every year to dawdle for days over U Allegro, II Penseroso, and 
Burke's speech? In the thing itself there surely resides no 
sovereign virtue whatsoever — only infinite boredom for pupil and 
teacher alike. 

In fact, however, the English course — like the Latin course 
and the history course and the mathematics course and the 
science course — was devised by persons who never took into 
consideration such factors as boy-nature, girl-nature, what is 



LATIN AND GREEK 185 

left of teacher-nature, or the realities of life and the universe ; 
and it is carried out implicitly by teachers who do not compare 
what actually happens with what the theory of mental discipline 
assumes is happening. For, just as soon as the product is tested, 
— tested as to knowledge of the subjects studied, or tested 
as to the power thereby developed, — at that moment the whole 
structure will collapse like the house of cards that it is. 

Mental discipline thus effaces the natural distinctions 
between different subjects; it makes Latin, history, mathematics, 
science, and English as nearly as possible the same. It empties 
the subjects of content in order the more effectively to utilize 
them for intellectual discipline. I repeat what I have already 
said : this discipline trains what it trains, — not general faculties, 
but specialized abilities, — the degree of specialization depending 
on the relative breadth of narrowness of the presentation ; on 
the extent, that is, to which discipline forgets itself and for 
the time being becomes content. Dr. Rose very aptly compares 
the champions of mental discipline to the Egyptian priests who 
planted rows of dead sticks which, for disciplinary purposes, 
they watered regularly; had they planted corn, they would 
have got the same discipline, and something more : the corn, for 
example, and everything directly and indirectly involved therein. 

The champions of mental discipline do not usually try to 
prove their case by testing the faculties supposed to have been 
trained. From time to time a business man avers that his 
classical training lay at the bottom of his commercial success ; 
and some engineers are credibly reported to have expressed the 
same sentiment. But retrospection is, to say the least, unreliable. 
I do not forget, of course, the examinations — the preparatory 
school examinations and the college-entrance examinations. 
But these examinations do not test the faculties which mental 
discipline claims to have trained; they are not tests of memory- 
power, reasoning-power, observation-power, imagination. They 
test only whether the candidate remembers the things by 
means of which the faculties in question are said to have been 
trained. If a boy is required to learn 

amnis, axis, callis, crinis, 
cassis, caulis, fascis, finis, 
funis, fustis, ignis, ensis, — 
orbis, panis, piscis, mensis, 



i86 SELECTED ARTICLES 

in order to train his memory, you do not prove his memory to 
have been trained by requiring him to repeat the lines (especially 
if, as is usually the case, he has forgotten most of them). Nor 
do you prove that a long succession of geometrical propositions 
has trained his reasoning power, because he can reproduce the 
simpler ones, after hard drilling on them. You merely prove 
that a person who has done a thing often enough can sometimes 
do the same thing again — more particularly, if he has been warned 
in advance as to just when he may be called on to do it. Mean- 
while, certain types of memory and reasoning power and obser- 
vation might really be tested; but, to prove the preparatory 
school contention, these powers would have to be tried on 
material that is both fresh and varied. This is not done. 

A much more limited test might however have its uses — 
namely, a test of the power of pupils in the very subjects with 
which they have been working. The school tests and the college- 
entrance tests are not sufficiently objective; besides, the results 
have not been studied in a away to throw light on the funda- 
mental questions involved. Latin is taught — we are told — so as 
to train the mind. Very well ; let us find out in the first place, 
how well it is taught. A certain state superintendent of educa- 
tion has recently asked every fourth-year high-school Latin 
pupil in his state to tell in writing the meaning of a piece of 
simple Latin prose. On the basis of the performance he makes 
a preliminary estimate of the efficiency of Latin teaching in his 
state as between 10 and 15 per cent. This result and other 
results not a whit more encouraging ought to suggest to 
believers in mental discipline a series of problems. If Latin is 
taught to train the mind, how successfully must it be taught in 
order to train the mind? Is any kind of result better than none 
at all? Is an inferior result — failure in greater or less degee — 
capable of harming the mind or character? What does an 
efficiency of 15 per cent signify? Does it guarantee training, or 
may it indicate damage? If it should be decided that 15 per cent 
efficiency is not helpfully disciplinary, then just where shall the 
line be drawn? Suppose we tentatively assume that an efficiency 
of 60 or 75 per cent indicates a trained mind, can an efficiency 
of 15 per cent, objectively measured, be raised to an efficiency 
of 60 or 75 per cent, similarly measured, and if so, how? Is 
success in this possible? If possible, what would it cost in time, 
effort, and money? Would it be worth what it cost to all, or 



LATIN AND GREEK 187 

only to those who can achieve it with a moderate expenditure? If 
a low final grade indicates damage, what shall be done for those 
who cannot be brought above it? Obviously the same questions 
can and should be raised as to the other subjects in the disciplinary 
curriculum. And when the disciplinarians begin to study educa- 
tion in a scientific spirit, they will entertain such questions and 
patiently seek the answers to them. 

Before leaving the subject, I must touch on one other point. 
Mental discipline is sometimes, as I have said, called a 'gym- 
nastic,' and it is held to be justified by the bodily analogy. I 
do not want to be entangled in a discussion based on metaphors ; 
the metaphors are too apt to come between the disputants and 
their subject. But so much I may say: the physical gymnasium 
may or may not train the muscles for other uses ; at any rate, 
it makes only a limited demand daily on the time and energy of 
the boy; it leaves him free to cultivate other forms of physical 
expression and urges the wholesomeness of so doing. Not so the 
mental disciplinarians. Their procedure — meagre and one-sided 
though it be — tends, by mere pressure, if not otherwise, to 
exclude other forms of mental and spiritual activity. At a 
time when pupils are being formally disciplined and mentally 
trained by means of six subjects all presented in the same 
fashion, one might suppose that teachers, supposed to be students 
and observers of the adolescent mind and soul, would be aware 
of other potential interests and capacities that must be given a 
chance. Not at all. Children with a turn for the woods, for 
animals, for poetry, for music, for modeling, for drawing, or 
with the possibility of such a turn, have no right to be heard as 
against the sure intellectual and moral salvation promised by 
a mental discipline, which has never been subjected by its 
votaries to a critical examination! If the grind destroys or 
starves out their possibilities — well, their 'faculties' have been 
trained ! 

IV 

When I say that American schools generally are committed 
to the theory of formal discipline, I do not mean- that other 
claims are not from time to time also advanced. Latin and 
Greek are occasionally defended on the ground of their culture- 
value. The champions of formal discipline appear not to realize 



188 SELECTED ARTICLES 

that the culture argument flatly contradicts the disciplinary 
theory, and really accepts the content view of education. In 
any event, the methods pursued and the results obtained belie 
the culture argument. Latin and Greek have culture-value only 
for those who learn the languages and read the literatures. But 
so few of those who study Latin and Greek learn them, read 
their literatures, or take any interest in their literatures, that 
the culture claim cannot be taken seriously as a ground for 
general and enforced study of Latin or Greek. If, of course, 
any one desires to learn Latin or Greek as he would undertake 
to learn French or German, and for the same kind of reason, no 
objection could be urged, for such study would be calculated 
to realize culture-value — which is a real and not a formal end. 
But an argument for the classics based on the assumption that 
they are to be mastered and appreciated cannot possibly serve 
as an argument for a study that does not result in mastery or 
appreciation, and is not expected to result in either. It is a 
tactical blunder for believers in classical culture to make com- 
mon cause with the mental disciplinarians, for classical culture 
can thus only be involved in the ruin which has overtaken mental 
discipline. 

Precisely the same must be said of any argument for Latin 
or Greek on the ground that higher education must transmit 
the inheritance of the race. The transmission of culture in the 
shape of literature, art, history, philosophy — this is content- 
education, not disciplinary education. Transmission can be 
effected either through the original language, or through trans- 
lation, or through both. But if through the original, then the 
language must be learned, just as French is learned, as a medium 
for the communication of ideas. The disciplinary purpose is 
once more a contradiction. Persons who really believe in the 
culture argument or the transmission argument cannot too soon 
extricate themselves from their present educational company; 
they belong on the content side. Instead of defending education 
of the disciplinary type, they ought to be raising the question as 
to how in this busy modern world the content of ancient culture 
can be conserved and transmitted. Whatever the way, it will 
not be through schools organized and conducted on the theory 
of mental discipline. 

The situation in respect to the theory of formal discipline is, 
indeed, a curious one. It dominates American education generally ; 



LATIN AND GREEK 189 

it receives in the preparatory school a clean-cut, unqualified 
embodiment. Our educational administrators thus accept it, 
believe in it, practice it. Meanwhile, among students of the 
science and art of education, — that is, among those who are 
concerned with the study of educational processes and results, — 
the theory of formal discipline has, nowadays, no standing 
whatever. It is as though the students of disease believe, let 
us say, in the germ theory, while the practitioners of medicine 
took no stock in it at all. As a matter of fact, practitioners 
of medicine listen to the students of disease; but educational 
administrators are still wary of psychologists and such folk ! 

For our present purpose, I need not argue the case against 
formal discipline further. It is clear that its psychology is 
seriously at fault ; for the faculties — memory, reason, etc. — which 
formal discipline thinks to train in such wise that they can 
afterwards be used to deal with any problem or emergency 
that arises, simply do not exist in separate form. Memory, 
reason, imagination are not single entities which can be disci- 
plined once for all. There are all sorts of ways of remembering, 
reasoning, and imagining; so that, from the standpoint of 
training, not a monotonous, verbal, and intellectual set of 
exercises is needed, but rather all kinds of physical and intel- 
lectual experience. Further, formal discipline errs in belittling 
the possibilities of interest, in ignoring the urgency of knowl- 
edge and power adapted to practical needs, social and personal, 
and, finally, in overlooking the significance and importance of 
individual capacity. It is at once false in its psychology and 
too narrow in its outlook. 



A school that concerned itself with content would begin by 
asking what children naturally do and are capable of doing; 
what tasks life imposes; what accomplishments are of inherent 
value ; what different sorts of ability can be profitably and 
happily employed. It would set out to guide and to develop the 
interests and abilities of children; it would select from the 
objective world significant objects — languages, literature, art, 
civics, industry, physical phenomena — in the hope of making them 
objects of genuine and significant concern to growing boys and 
girls. It would not bother with discipline in the abstract; but 



190 SELECTED ARTICLES 

it would endeavor so to do its work that habits and attitudes 
of the right kind would tend to become the ways in which the 
individual expressed himself. In a content school such as I am 
describing one would study languages in order to understand 
them, to use them, to have access to the ideas stored up in 
them, to satisfy one's curiosity, if one will, about their history, 
structure, and so forth. But always one's aim would be involved 
in the language, not in some supposed medication of one's 
mental faculties through it. Again, one would study science, 
not to discipline the mind, but to serve a purpose through 
knowing the subject; the same would be true of history and 
literature. Science, literature, history, modern languages, indus- 
trial processes, would be taught because they answer the ques- 
tions which live people ask and can be led to ask, or because they 
in their substance minister to our needs, capacities, or aspira- 
tions, — taught, that is, because they serve purposes and in order 
that they may serve purposes. 

Some of the purposes will be what some people might, per- 
haps, call low ; some of the purposes will be what they might 
be pleased to call high. We can afford, however, to be less 
concerned with the topography of the purposes than with the 
reality or genuineness of the results. If literature can be taught 
so that there is a vital connection between school and home 
reading; if history can be taught so that it supplies the child 
with answers to his problems and raises more problems still ; 
if languages can be taught so that they can be used ; if science 
can be taught so that the world about us is either intelligible 
or intelligently unintelligible; if industry can be so utilized that 
the child can understand and sympathize, it is immaterial by 
what adjective either the effort or the result is described. Is it 
not clear that this way of studying restores to every subject 
its proper individuality and thereby engages the mind in various 
ways? There could indeed be no greater absurdity than to 
divorce training from content, even were it possible ; all the 
advantage lies the other way. In other words, the purpose for 
which subjects are taught lies, not in the pupil's mind, but in 
the subject-matter and its relations to existence and life; and 
the more varied and appealing and trying, if you will, the 
subject-matter, the better for the boy, whether the result be 
viewed from the standpoint of discipline so-called, or from the 
standpoint of knowledge, interest, and power. The purposes 



LATIN AND GREEK 191 

inherent in subject-matter and its world-relations are infinite 
in variety. Some are utilitarian; some spiritual. Some are 
mediate — that is, lead elsewhere ; some end with their own attain- 
ment. But they are always and invariably real, not formal ; 
and discipline comes — if it comes at all — through exercise and 
experience with various realities. 

At heart, intelligent teachers of the classics must know this 
just as well as we do; they must in their candid moments admit 
to themselves that they hold on to the theory of mental dis- 
cipline because their present subjects are not successfully 
taught as content. They defend Latin and Greek as instru- 
ments of mental discipline; but they know perfectly well that 
that is not why Latin and Greek came into education. Latin 
and Greek came into education as real subjects, not as formal 
subjects; they came into education because they embodied more 
valuable thoughts than other languages, and because except 
through learning Latin and Greek the thoughts were not acces- 
sible. Suppose even to-day someone invented a way to teach 
Latin, — a way to teach it so that preparatory school pupils could 
speak it, read it, care for its literature, — would not the prepara- 
tory schools jump at it and never mention mental discipline 
again? Do they not really know that there is more good of 
one kind or another to be got out of knowing a language than 
out of the discipline acquired through failure to learn it? 

Consider the question from another angle. I know a family 
of children whose father reads, writes, and speaks Latin. It 
is to him a language in the same sense and for the same purpose 
as English and French. His children are acquiring Latin as 
they are acquiring English and French. There is no question 
of grammar or syntax, of formal or of informal discipline. 
They are absorbing Latin through their pores. Is this a bad 
thing or a good thing? Are those children acquiring a language 
at the expense of a discipline? Are they getting culture by 
sacrificing mental training, and, perhaps, moral training, too? 
Are we to say that, if Latin could be learned as children grow 
up, because it is spoken in the household, the loss to intellectual 
training would be utterly disastrous ? Of course, no one believes 
this. Everybody knows that the value of Latin is in knowing 
Latin, as the value of French is in knowing French, and the 
value of botany is in knowing botany, and in using it to solve 
problems and serve purposes ; and that thorough and varied 



192 SELECTED ARTICLES 

knowledge in this sense is effective as training because it 
involves wide, varied, stimulating, and resourceful employment 
of one's capacities. If, then, Latin is to remain in the curri- 
culum, it remains in order to be learned; and if it goes out, it 
goes out because it is not learned, or because other languages 
or other subjects are better worth while. 

In conclusion, a word by way of quieting the apprehensions 
of those who fear that real studies will weaken character 
through appealing solely to spontaneous interest and through 
following slavishly its vicissitudes. I observe here once more 
indications that the disciplinarians have not exerted themselves 
to understand the opposing theory, and have not carefully 
reflected upon their own practice. When, for example, they 
discover a teacher of Greek who interests his pupils and arouses 
their enthusiasm, they do not discharge him. They do not tell 
him to make the work disciplinary by making it dull; they 
raise his salary. If interest — whether native or derived — is 
salutary in respect to Greek, why is it dangerous in connection 
with a modern subject or activity? Now let me say that in 
my judgment every teacher, every parent, every business man, 
every person responsible for any kind of result, will do well 
to enlist the most vigorous possible interest on the part of 
those with whom he is trying to work. That only means that 
the workers are active, assertive, that their powers are mobilized 
— the very attitude that a good teacher or effective leader aims 
to procure. 

I do sincerely hope that every teacher in a modern school 
will have enough common sense to do this. The preparatory 
schools themselves do it when they can, and are right in so 
doing. Interest, whether native or derived, is indeed the most 
direct, though not the only, path to moral, intellectual, and 
economic salvation. So far from being a source of possible 
demoralization, it is the most certain means of preventing just 
that. 

Perhaps it may be said in reply that it is not so much 
interest that is to be dreaded, as the heeding of variable and 
inconstant interests. But this is a manufactured bogey. The mod- 
ernist does not propose to follow up every interest: he proposes 
to select and to develop significant interests. Nor does he pn> 
pose to heed only the child's native interests and to drop 
activities as soon as interest flags. Subjects and activities will 
be selected because they serve purposes. Many of them will 



LATIN AND GREEK 193 

be interesting, if teachers are fairly competent — the more, the 
better. But they will be taught because they serve purposes, 
not because they tickle the palate, and they will be taught 
thoroughly enough to serve their purposes, whether they cease 
or continue to interest. Difficult things will be done — some 
with zest, let us hope, others by hard pulling against the stream. 
In both cases — as in all cases — the effort will lead somewhere, 
and it will be supported by the consciousness that it does lead 
somewhere. Meanwhile, such effort involves no surrender of 
♦ the principle that interest, derived as well as native, forms a 
legitimate and powerful motive. I should work it to the limit; 
I feel sure that far more can be done with it than .is commonly 
done; but it is, after all, only one aspect of a complicated 
problem, and no well-informed person has ever made it the 
sole criterion of educational value. 



THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 1 

English is probably both the least-taught and the worst- 
taught subject in the whole educational field. It is bad in 
the grade schools, worse in the high schools, worst in the college, 
while the university reaps the full benefit of the evil crescendo. 
The "English" of the modern curriculum varies from a silly 
combination of "Mother Goose" and the jargon of science or the 
shibboleths of religion to a disingenuous synthesis of antique 
philology and emasculated literature. No wonder some of the 
men and women who speak and write their language well 
would extend to prose the judgment passed upon poetry: English 
untaught is taught best. A teacher of English is so often a 
spoiler of English. Sometimes the only advice to a young man 
(less often a young woman) contemplating a serious composition 
in his mother-tongue is that of Punch in the case of marriage : 
"Don't." How does it happen that a man like John Bright, who 
never had the advantages of a classical or a college education, 
spoke and wrote perfect English, while our well-trained men 
of science can often do neither? 

In the present brief essay the writer, from his own experi- 
ence and investigation, desires to discuss some of the causes of 
this state of affairs and to suggest some common-sense remedies. 

A New Orientation. Before we can expect good English both 

1 Alexander F. Chamberlain, Pedagogical Seminary. 9:161-8. June, 1902. 



194 . SELECTED ARTICLES 

teachers and pupils, together with the public interested in edu- 
cational affairs, must orient themselves anew concerning the 
origin and development of their mother-tongue. The study of 
English seems about the last place to feel the full effect of the 
Darwinian revolution. With wonderful obstinacy- it keeps its 
face toward the setting instead of the rising sun, toward the 
past rather than the future. It would be a decided advantage 
were every teacher compelled to take a course in modern 
Chinese instead of in ancient Greek, for then he would possess 
some useful knowledge about the form of human speech most 
akin, psychologically, to his own and not so much useless 
lumber concerning that one most remote from it. Herein 
lies the essence of the new orientation. Let us study English 
in its relation to the only tongues that can ever compete with 
it for the mastery of the world, — Russian, Chinese, Japanese. 
The recognition of the psychological kinship of English and 
Chinese in particular may be of more moment to the race than 
was the discovery of the linguistic unity of the Aryan of the 
Indus and of the Thames. The Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit 
aspects of English have been fearfully overdone. We must 
exorcise the ghost of Max Miiller and hold out tete-a-tete with 
the living yellow man who clings to his speech- and propagates 
his kind so well. We can be very sure he will still be numerous 
and interesting when the last English grammar has been writ- 
ten. A course in Chinese will reveal to the teacher in con- 
vincing fashion that his language is a vehicle of thought and 
not a museum of grammar, and that, in matters of speech, the 
brains of 400,000,000 Mongolians and 100,000,000 Anglo-Saxons 
have moved upon remarkably similar lines representing, psy- 
chologically, the high-water mark of human achievement. This 
is the best antidote for the classical nostrum, — to be taken 
quant, suff. The study of English must be keyed to the future 
not to the past. 

A Broader Field of Comparison. Some of the poor character 
of English teaching is certainly due to limitation of the field of 
comparison. The individuality of the mother-tongue has been 
lost sight of and its special virtues underestimated by the long- 
continued over-valuation of the merely formal qualities of 
Greek and Latin. A like effect has been produced by what 
Lenz calls the "deification" of Sanskrit. Under the pernicious 
influence of the classicists, the so-called "modern languages" of 



LATIN AND GREEK 195 

continental Europe have been simply pitied or despised, until 
the crying needs of commerce and world-politics forced them 
into the educational field. The neglect of the other living 
languages of mankind has been absolute,- — the new facts gained 
from the investigation of Asiatic and American Indian families 
of speech have not yet come into the ken of the "expert" in 
English, who is woefully ignorant of the general principles of 
linguistic evolution and often the exponent of some artificial 
system of instruction in which the grammar, the dictionary and 
the text-book take the place of living thought and its genial 
expression. A good waking up of the teacher along this line 
is absolutely necessary. Some up-to-date discussion of the 
essentials of comparative philology should find a place in every 
normal school, and as much of it as can be readily understood 
be given to the pupils in every high school. Then we will not 
find a graduate of one of the best high schools in Massachusetts 
leaving its halls under the impression that English is a descend- 
ant of modern High German, or believing that all new words 
in the language must be derived from Greek or Latin. The 
calamitous effect of such ideas upon the use of English as a 
tool of thought is only too apparent. 

No Language a Model for Another. — It is an idea born of 
methods of monks and pedants that the Latins and the Hellenes 
in laying the foundations of their own languages were intent 
upon improving the style of modern English. Every tongue 
is sui generis as a factor in human evolution. English in this 
respect is absolutely independent of Greek and Latin, whose 
contributions were in no way foreordained or predestined for 
the purpose of eking out the time of the grade-school and 
teaching young Americans how to read, write and speak their 
mother-tongue. For the ordinary boy and girl the inflections 
and conjugations of the classical languages are simply a mill- 
stone around the neck, — English has decreed that they be "cast 
as rubbish to the void," and our language should be taught 
as it is and not as if it were a Greek or Latin dialect. Its 
progress as a form of speech practically without inflection should 
be the important thing, not the minute dissection of the skins 
it has sloughed off, the organs it has reduced to innocuous 
desuetude. What makes English English outweighs the relics 
of its earlier days. Not the fossil grammar, but the living 
speech, is matter for education. One will write and speak his 



10 SELECTED ARTICLES 

language better when his attention is given to that toward which 
it is moving rather than that from which it has broken away. 
Some information about the bed-fellow in the next lodging- 
house is better than a plethora of detail about the one in the last. 
Latin not the Basis of English. — Latin has no more shaped 
the English tongue than Rome has built the Saxon heart or 
made the Saxon arm. English grammar is soundly Anglo- 
Saxon run through the sieve of a mind that never had a Latin 
bent. The good red blood of the vocabulary is Saxon too. 
After 1,500 years of subjection to Latin influence English is 
still English. Soldier, churchman, litterateur, statesman, sci- 
entist, have in succession been the advocates of Latin, but in 
vain. It has always been Mrs. Partington engaged in the same 
old attempt to turn the tide with a broom. From the unfath- 
omable depths of the Teutonic ocean has come the mighty 
rush of waters overwhelming the Latin shallows and treating 
them to a bath of good Saxon brine. All the Latin in modern 
English is thus pretty well pickled. Before it went into the 
brine, too, every bit of Latin had the Anglo-Saxon meat-in- 
spector's mark put on it. And a good many carasses went to 
the soap-factory. The teacher of English needs to know that 
Latin has no skeleton-key by which to open the doors of Eng- 
lish at will. To-day Latin can enter English speech only by 
the same door through which come Russian, Persian, American 
Indian, Chinese and Malay. It is quite useless for Latin to try 
to steal a march while the long line is waiting, for the heart 
and soul of English are very democratic, and, when competitors, 
Latin counts for no more than Choctaw. It is the English 
thought, not the Latin garb, that is master of the situation. 
The test is service to a living tongue of the twentieth century, 
not homage or shelter of the wandering manes of dead vocab- 
ularies, or unquiet ghosts of languages wearying of the linguistic 
Hades and seeking for some real live incarnation among the 
thoughts of man. Latin, like every other tongue, is clay in the 
hands of the English potter. And he has more than one wheel 
to shape it upon. Spelling, pronunciation, form, meaning, etc., 
all these turn beneath his skillful hand. Who would recognize 
in jilt the descendant of. Juliana, or in cab the offspring of 
caper ("he goat") ? Why if Latin be so indispensable to modern 
English, has it (or Greek) not furnished substitutes for words 
like these: Boycott, tariff, gong, caucus, taboo, totem, tattoo, 



LATIN AND GREEK 197 

cannibal, Tammany, bazaar, boomerang, hammock, hurricane, 
curari, guano, shampoo, cabal, mammon, etc.? For the simple 
reason that the Roman and the Greek mind never saw or felt some 
of these things as we see and feel them, and our language is 
strong enough to pick and choose from the living, not borrow per- 
force from the dead tongues of earth. The classicists are shocked 
at the ease with which English Sprachgefilhl discovers these 
words and at the difficulty they meet in getting their own book- 
made terms adopted. They forget that English has no grammar 
wherewith to shackle any word. No armor to protect it, no 
ornament to deck it out with save thought only. To English 
the Latin and Greek arsenal of gender, case, inflection, conjuga- 
tion, etc., is a sort of Nuremburg torture-chamber representing 
the Dark Ages of language when pious and bigoted literary 
inquisitioners sought to convert all words, all languages, into 
some sort of orthodox Latinity. But speech no less than faith, 
had its Luther. What a wail went up from the classicists, who 
claimed to be the guardians of "pure English," when the word 
sociology was coined and successfully floated. Their loud 
protests against hybridism in compound terms only emphasized 
the fact that neither of their boasted model-languages could 
alone furnish the needed expression, so English, scorning the 
grammarian's limitations, took part from each and the new 
word appeared to designate a new and important branch of the 
science of man. The heart of English is still English. John- 
sonese is dead. Macaulayesque is moribund even in our high 
schools where it has so long found shelter. Paragraphing may 
occasionally galvanize the ghost and make it walk a little, but, 
save where the English manufactured by teachers of English 
and written by men of science whom they have taught still 
lags superfluous on the stage, the English born of Latin imita- 
tion is on the way to decent interment. The greatest English 
of any century was written by one who knew "small Latin and 
less Greek," and the best English of our day by some who 
knew still less of both. If the teacher wants to see how Eng- 
lish English can be, let him look at this little poem by F. W. 
Bourdillon : 

"The night has a thousand eyes, 
And the day but one; 

Yet the light of the bright world dies 
With the dying sun. 



iq8 SELECTED ARTICLES 

"The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one ; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies 

When love is done." 

Not a single word of Latin or Greek origin does this poem 
contain, and yet it seems to be pretty good English. And if 
the teachers would read the English Bible more and the Sun- 
day newspaper less they would discover plenty more good 
English in which the Latin and Greek words are few and far 
between. The teacher needs to recognize that while Latin and 
Greek may add to the dictionary words that are there only by 
the mistaken efforts of men of science, who bury in such 
cerements the knowledge they have so laboriously acquired, they 
are but the "painted show," the real drama of life goes on in 
English, — it is the Saxon heart of English that is given "life 
more abundantly." Latin and Greek are incidents or accidents, 
not necessities, of our mother-tongue. 

Full Use should be Made of the Evolutionary Aspect of 
English. No language in the world illustrates so well the devel- 
opment of human speech in harmony with the evolution of a 
great individual civilization. It has more, than a thousand years 
of documented history from King Alfred to Goldwin Smith, 
from Caedmon to Kipling, from the oldest Saxon to the newest 
American. Here we have the whole progress of a language 
from the inflectional wealth of the Old English to the half dozen 
or more endings to which this has shrunk in the speech of 
today. And the verb has gained like the noun. Modern Eng- 
lish believes in the preposition and the small particle against 
the long ending and the Latin verb. On every hand it has 
sought correlation with the world of thought, not with the 
formland of the school-men. Language and literature alike are 
evolving to this end. Touched by Celt, Roman, Norman, and 
Frenchman, the spoken word and the written have progressed 
along paths peculiarly their own, and the giant figure of 
Shakespeare, no less than the speech of his people, is unique 
among men. With the Celt and the Saxon, English has sounded 
the depths of inter-racial conflict, with Englishman and Nor- 
man it has fought the battles of democracy and aristocracy, 
with the Tudors is has felt the emancipation of religion; later 
still it was with the evolution of the modern parliamentary 



LATIN AND GREEK 199 

system, as before it was present at its birth ; and in the wake 
of New World discovery it has builded a Greater England 
over-sea, and circled the globe with its commerce, while multi- 
tudes in every continent and sea make it more and more the 
living language of mankind. All this the teacher of English 
should know, and as much of it as he can, he ought to teach. 
English as an object-lesson in human evolution is better than 
English shackled to the grammar and the dictionary. 

The Democracy of English must be Recognized. Hitherto 
English has been taught as if it were an aristocracy for which 
youth (always so democratic) needed to be prepared. The core 
of a language is common to its men, women, and children, — 
children at play, women at work, men at their ordinary tasks, 
these are the makers and keepers of the speech that lives. 
Women, the guardians of the child, were the first shapers and 
transmitters of language. A few words sufficed the hunter, 
cunningly tracking the wild beast to his lair, or stealthily seek- 
ing the scalp of his foe. Woman, over the cradle, where life, 
not death, was inspiring her, caught innumerable sounds from 
the lips of infancy, and gave them place in the mother-tongue, 
which the laconic father was only too ready to accept. Of all 
things it ill becomes women-teachers to Latinize English ; the 
Saxon heart of it is theirs by an inalienable birth-right. Since 
the very beginnings of our language the mother and her child 
have been together, and English is Saxon still. Take out of Eng- 
lish but a single series of words (all w6man's own by genial 
labor in the past), — sow, sew, sweep, spin, weave, grind, wind, 
wash, bake, etc., — and what a void there is ! And how many 
of the slang terms that ultimately find lodgment in the best 
dictionaries were coined by the child of the street ! The teacher 
must cease to look upon English as something to be shaped and 
regulated for an aristocracy of men, and come to see that it is 
the tool of the democracy of men, women, and children, whose 
title to its use is far sounder than the decree of any pedagogic 
college of heraldry. 

King Grammar must be Dethroned. By some strange acci- 
dent the democracy of English is still subject to a king, whose 
tottering authority the great body of teachers, unable to break 
away from old traditions, chivalrously uphold. And this king 
is no Saxon monarch, but a tyrant of the books tracing his 
dynasty back to the days when the Latin school-men ruled 



200 SELECTED ARTICLES 

supreme. What is needed is a good, healthy declaration of 
independence and the relegation to the lumber-yard of the 
Latin grammars and their imitations. . The teacher must see 
that English is to be taught as English, and not as if it were a 
Latin dialect. He must wake up to the real meaning of the 
fact that only by a supreme effort is Latin now used in the city 
of Rome itself, while a score of cities as important as the one by 
Tiber's side have sprung up in all parts of the world whose 
common speech is the once despised English. England once 
supplied oysters and slaves for the Roman emperors, now she 
has girdled the globe with a tongue, the record of whose thoughts 
and dreams requires a lexicon nearly fifty times as large as 
that which interprets all there is left of the prose and verse of 
her would-be Latin masters. It is to this larger democracy of 
the future, and not to the limited aristocracy of the past, that 
the teacher should swear allegiance. When, at the Council of 
Constance in 1414, the Emperor Sigismund was rebuked by the 
Cardinal Placentius for using a neuter noun as feminine he 
replied, "I am King of the Romans, and above grammar." 
And the way in which the various Romance languages have 
treated the neuter nouns they borrowed from Latin showed 
that they too were "above grammar," and indicates what they 
would have done further in this matter had not the school-men 
interfered. Four hundred years later a president of the United 
States (no less a man than Jefferson) went on record in these 
words "Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expres- 
sion it should be attended to. But where, by small grammatical 
negligence the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands 
for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt." But 
the users of English must be prepared to go farther than the 
Emperor and the President. And their poets point the way. 
Whitman in rude and Browning in more artistic fashion are the 
poets of democracy whose deliberate violations of grammar 
ask and need no excuse. The school-men may cavil and murmur 
as they please, but these prophets represent the future democracy 
foresworn of its allegiance to king grammar and speaking free 
men's thoughts as free men should. With such, the language 
shall come to its own, and thought, not form, be master of 
its destinies. The teacher should remember that while poets 
are akin to the gods, the grammarian is least among the sons 
of men. The poet thinks the thought of God after Him, the 



LATIN AND GREEK 201 

grammarian shackles the thought of man with fetters he has 
made himself. 

Poetry must not be Made into Prose. Poetry is the greatest 
possession of man. All language was once poetry, and most 
of it would be now if it were not for the petty dissections of the 
modern grammalogue. In spite of the ancient philosopher who 
wanted to exclude them from his ideal republic the poets still 
live, and the little children love them as of old. Poetry is as 
eternal as childhood itself. It will never die out as long as 
generation after generation continues to produce fathers and 
mothers and the never-ending chain of children links past, 
present and future into one. President Eliot would teach all, — 
religion, morals, civics, — by poetry. Men of science like Presi- 
dent Hall are of like opinion. So, too, students of nature, like 
Burroughs, who hold that poetry itself is sufficient without the 
brand of the teacher upon it. They are right. Give the chil- 
dren poetry fresh from the hands of genius and of God. Let 
there be no tampering with it. Hands off grammarian and re- 
toucher ! Of all criminals the worst is the teacher who wants 
the child-like thoughts of genius transmuted into his own adult 
commonplaceness. Paraphrasing is a sin against the Holy Ghost. 
It has done more than any other single thing to kill the instinct 
for good English. Its very name should be anathema. We have 
barrels of sermons, bushels of orations, and books innumerable 
treating of the birth of American liberty, but who does not 
turn to the poet for the best word of all? And yet a teacher 
will set a pupil to paraphrasing this holy scripture, for such it 
is. Such action is utter sacrilege. A teacher who demands this 
is worse than any savage or barbarian. Emerson's immortal 
hymn ought at least to be freed from the Cossacks of the 
school. Over Shakespeare's grave we read : 

"Good Friend, for Jesus sake forbeare 
To digg the dust encloased heare ;• 
Bleste be the man who spares thes stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones." 

This of the dead body of the poet. What words shall frame 
the blessing and the curse for those who have to do with the 
living body of the poet, the part of him that can never die? 

The teacher of English ought above all to know good English 



202 SELECTED ARTICLES 

when he sees it, and to be wise enough to let it alone. It will 
sing itself into the hearts of the young without his organ of 
adulteration. 



CLASSICAL LITERATURE THROUGH ENGLISH 
TRANSLATIONS x 

In the sixteenth century Melanchthon, the father of German 
humanistic schools, wrote an essay, not devoid of pathos, entitled 
De miser Us pedagogorum, in which among other things he be- 
wails the stupor pedagogicus which descends upon the unhappy 
pupils through their "measureless labor and weariness in learn- 
ing the Latin tongue." He laments the fate of the German as 
compared with the Greek who needed not to learn a strange 
tongue, but, as soon as he could read and write, went straight- 
way to the study of science and philosophy. About a hundred 
years later, the bright chief of English humanists, Milton him- 
self, complains that "we do amiss to spend seven or eight years 
in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as 
might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year." 
"Language," he further declares, "is but the instrument convey- 
ing to us things useful to be known." 2 He agreed then with 
Melanchthon's opinion, that "Latin and Greek are not culture, 
but only the gate thereto." Unfortunately, the "easy and delight- 
ful" method of learning Latin in one year has never been 
realized in practice, at least for ordinary mortals. 

Since those days the status of culture has greatly changed: 
the vernacular tongues of Germany, England, and other 
European countries, which then were despised as incompetent 
and unfit for the embodying of any true literature or science, 
have risen to proud eminence in all branches of human thought. 
Particularly vital to our present theme is the fact that all the 
greatest classical works, for the sake of which the early human- 
ists endured the "measureless toil of learning Latin," have been 
rendered by master-hands into the native and current languages 
of the civilized countries. Yet strange to say, the evils of 
which Melanchthon and Milton complain still exist; pupils in 
our schools still suffer from the ravages of the stupor 

1 Edward O. Sisson. School Review. 14:660-3. November, 1906. 

2 Tractate on Education, p. 118. (Cassell, London, 1904.) 



LATIN AND GREEK 203 

pedagogicus, and still "through long continued chase after 
words, lose the power to comprehend thoughts." As in Melanch- 
thon's time, so in ours, the study of the Latin and Greek lan- 
guages, which should be the doorway of admission to classic 
culture, too often proves instead a gate to bar out. This, we 
maintain, occurs in three ways. First and chiefest, vast quantities 
of time are devoured in the endeavor to master the languages, 
and thus the literatures are almost completely neglected. 
Secondly, the mastery of the language is, in all but a vanishing 
minority of cases, so far from perfect that the pupil gets little 
insight into the author's meaning, less into his style, and none 
into the true literary charm and beauty. Finally, the stupor 
pedagogicus becomes too often an odium classicum — a deep 
aversion to everything savoring of the languages which have 
formed such a long and tedious task. 

As to the second and third of these indictments, I have little 
to say; they are old enough, and have been often and vigorously 
urged, and as vigorously opposed ; I can only add a personal 
testimony which is the outcome of many years of teaching the 
two classical languages and observing the results of the teaching 
of others. As to the matter of time I wish to say a few words. 
Let us take the case of a lad who studies Latin the usual 
time in a public secondary school, daily for four years ; this 
makes, roughly, 150 weeks ; we may fairly reckon one hour 
daily for work outside of the recitation. In the natural course 
of his Latin work he would "take," first, a year's lessons upon 
matter of no real literary value ; then Caesar's Gallic War or 
material of somewhat similar quality and quantity; then from 
four to six books of the JEneid, and six or seven Orations of 
Cicero. Upon these his 150 weeks have been expended. 

What might he have done with translations? The following 
list is given merely as a suggestion of the sort of diet which he 
might enjoy, without the least idea that it is the best selection 
possible ; let every classical scholar find abundant fault with 
the selection, and so add strength to my main contention. 

Plutarch : ten selected Lives 8 weeks 

Homer : Odyssey entire 8 " 

Iliad entire 8 " 

Xenophon : Anabasis and selections from the 

Hellenica and Cyropedia 10 " 

Plato : Apology and Crito 5 " 



204 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Caesar : Gallic War, Civil War 10 weeks 

Three or four Greek plays 6 " 

Vergil: Aeneid entire; selections from 

Georgics and Bucolics 8 " 

Hesiod : selections from Works and Days . . 5 " 

Herodotus : selections 5 " 

Cicero : select Orations and Letters, De 

amicitia, De senectute 10 " 

Seneca : Morals (selections) 4 " 

Tacitus: Annals, Gernianica (selections).. 5 " 

Horace, Juvenal, Plautus (selections) 10 " 

Marcus Aurelius : selections 5 " 

Epictetus : selections 3 " 

Thucydides : selections 5 " 

Aristotle: Constitution of Athens, and selec- 
tions 5 " 

Pliny : selections 5 " 

Minor poets and dramatists 5 " 

Greek and Roman literary history, art, archi- 
tecture, mythology, religion, politics, 
private life, industry and commerce, 

social systems 20 " 

The above plan allows amply for the student to read the 
works named in his hours of private study, and for the teacher 
to explain and discuss them in the recitation hour, and when 
necessary to quiz the class upon what they have read. Let it 
not be forgotten that the time which suffices for this noble 
survey of actual classical literature is merely the amount com- 
monly given to Latin alone ; for those who would take Greek 
also one-half of two-fifths as much more might be added to the 
above list, and the time given from the latter part of the 
secondary course, when the mind is matured and strengthened 
by the discipline of the earlier years. 

By such a plan might the high-school student gain a real and 
living acquaintance with the master-works of the ancient world — 
the very thing for which Melanchthon and Milton labored ; in 
weighing the question we must not forget that the great majority 
of high-school pupils never enter college ; indeed, many of 
them do not complete the high-school course. When they 
devote themselves to the study of the Latin language, they 
simply sacrifice precious years to the acquisition of a tool for 



LATIN AND GREEK 205 

a task which they never lay hand to; the tool, poor enough 
at best, quickly rusts away to nothingness. Moreover, of those 
who go to college after having spent four years on Latin in 
the high school, many do not elect Latin, but thank their stars 
that they are finally done with it ; and, alas ! some who do take 
it, upon compulsion perhaps, find other doors to the needed 
"credit" in Latin than their supposed mastery of the language 
for which they have paid so dear ; in other words, those English 
renderings of the classics which might have been virtuous 
companions and entertainers, as well as sources of wisdom and 
culture, become the student's accomplices in an academic mis- 
demeanor. 

I have tried here merely to show reasons for believing that 
the use of translations of the classics would do far better service 
to classic culture than the present plan of -dragging the pupil 
through the thorny wilderness of the language. I do not mean 
to imply the view that the above list, or any similar list from 
the Greek and Latin literatures, is the most valuable substitute 
for the years of language study; many other branches of possible 
high-school study must be listened to. I am not unaware that 
I am silent regarding what is by some held to be the most 
cogent argument for the study of Latin and Greek — discipline. 
This is one point upon which I am quite willing to think with 
the humanists of the Renaissance, and with the Greeks, who 
thought it waste labor to repeat childhood in learning a new 
tongue. There is much suggestion in the words of Plutarch 
upon his own experience in learning Latin : "It was not so 
much by the knowledge of words that I came to the under- 
standing of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled 
to follow the meaning of words." 



WHY I HAVE A BAD EDUCATION x 

Although prepared for college by a well-known classical 
school, a Bachelor of Arts in one university and a Doctor of 
Philosophy in another, my education is far from satisfactory. 
The reason is clear enough ; a glance backwards reveals the 
cause in the stupid and irrational insistence upon the dead 
languages to which so many are subjected. 

1 Walter P. Hall. Outlook. 106:848-52. April 18, 1914. 



206 SELECTED ARTICLES 

By the time I, a trusting and docile boy, had reached the 
age of seventeen, it had been my lot to study the Latin language 
for five years and the Greek for four. Equipped forthwith 
with these great staples of the human mind divine, my reasoning 
powers strengthened and fortified by real mental pabulum, as 
my teachers told me, but in reality rendered dull and osseous, 
'I was matriculated at college. To be sure, I was duly certified 
in the knowledge of certain other studies ; of geometrical figures 
and algebraic formulas I must have known something, phantom- 
like ghosts of an uneasy past though they now appear. Also 
two years of German and a little English Literature had been 
meted out to me, together with a brief sketch of Ancient 
History, quite ancillary, as it were, to the work in the classics. 
The college entrance examinations in my case were twenty in 
number, and twelve of the twenty — if Greek and Roman history 
be included — dwelt exclusively with the classics. The other 
eight were divided between English, mathematics, and German. 
Nothing else was demanded. Of every branch of modern 
science I was as ignorant as an aboriginal Australian. If I 
knew anything at all of mediaeval or modern civilization, it 
was purely fortuitous. Geography and American history were 
studied in grammar school, but in a primitive and amorphous 
fashion ; the wealth of knowledge therein attained ranging from 
an enumeration of the capital's of Europe to a recrtal of the 
various battles of the Mexican War. Nowhere had there been 
a whisper of the workings of the American Government or 
of present-day social conditions in our country. 

The quid pro quo which was mine in return for this lore of 
the ancients was meager in character. Certainly, as the result 
of the application of so many years, an appreciation if not a 
love for the recognized masterpieces of classical literature might 
at least be expected ; yet of the former I have but little and of 
the latter none. Neither Virgil nor Horace is dear to me, and 
aside from these two poets five hundred pages contain all the 
classical Latin worthy of intensive study. Surely it is inexplic- 
able that the precious time of the school-boy should be given over 
to the stupid military operations of Julius Caesar or to the 
rhetorical vanities of Cicero. Greek literature, at least original, 
is expressive and beautiful, and as a youngster I well enjoyed 
my Iliad; but I do not read it now, and it is doubtful if I 



LATIN AND GREEK 207 

could. Herodotus and Thucydides are to be had in translation, 
and for Plato there is Jowett. 

Never before have I made so complete a confession. Not 
only have I deceived others in this matter for years, but I have 
deluded myself as well. Some leisure day, I said, I will turn 
once more to the classics for their wealth of golden thought and 
philosophy staid and mellow. And the picture of this coming 
treat, a constant atonement for contemporaneous neglect, took 
its place among those beautiful foreshadowings of delights 
which the future is to bring. To enjoy the classics in modera- 
tion seemed the thing to do. It is always done in books, and 
is said to exist in real life. One wonders if it does. On 
scrutiny, my entire acquaintanceship fails to reveal an individual, 
not directly engaged in the teaching of the classics, whom I 
have ever known to read either Latin or Greek for pure pleasure. 
Many speak with feeling of the art superb of the writers of 
antiquity. Most of us have done so ; but where are they who 
read them? A clergyman may, for conscience' sake, occasionally 
scan his Greek Testament, and other folk perhaps for motives 
similar pick up their dusty Virgils; but do any do so joyously? 
There may be such, but I know of none. Is it not, then, ques- 
tionable to cram these distasteful doses down the protesting 
throats of our restive children? Yet we do so with gusto, and 
talk with wise unction of the value of the unpalatable. Two 
years' teaching experience in one of the better known of our 
minor colleges has brought me in close contact with a faculty 
of intelligence and culture, a faculty which nevertheless voted 
all but unanimously to restore to sophomore year the compulsory 
study of an ancient language. Did my friends on that faculty 
read Latin or Greek? They may have in the small hours of 
the night or behind closed doors ; but if they did, I knew it not ; 
and, what is more, I suspect that many knew as little of the 
classics as I, and some perhaps less. One even wonders whether 
they of Oxford and Cambridge are not equally self-deceptive 
in this matter ; and though one speaks with diffidence on educa- 
tion in England, surely there is no evidence of any incontinent 
love for the ode Pindaric or the Latin Fathers among those 
graduates of her universities whom it has been my pleasure to 
meet. 

The assumption is frequently made that from the classics 



208 SELECTED ARTICLES 

may be extracted the mental training sans pareil. Of this there 
exists not one iota of proof. The study of Latin affords as 
good mental discipline as the study of biology, history, or any 
other well-synthesized subject, but discipline neither better nor 
worse. There is no psychological evidence extant that differen- 
tiates between Latin and German in so far as mental processes 
are affected, yet it is stoutly affirmed that the plastic intelligence 
of youth has but to be touched by the magic wand of Latin, 
and, presto ! he thinketh. Why should this miracle be so 
devoutly believed when no reason worthy the name is advanced 
for its substantiation? Nevertheless this mysterious and 
romantic operation is a recognized axiom of the creed pedagog- 
ical, and only yesterday a teacher of physics assured me that, 
inasmuch as Latin construction was harder than German, the 
study of the former language developed a keener analytic ability 
in him who would decipher its occult meaning. What an 
argument is this ! In all conscience, if difficulty in analysis is 
the desired end of education, let us introduce into our class- 
rooms the mental gymnastics of Duns Scotus and the mediaeval 
schoolmen. There is no exercise that involves more patient 
scrutiny and closer exegesis. 

The benefits that a classical education confer may be com- 
pactly stated in one paragraph. First, they undoubtedly afford 
a good foundation for the Romance languages. This, however, 
is easily exaggerated ; and, furthermore, the more profound 
the study of Latin, the less likely the pursuit of more than one 
Romance language, and, moreover, that one is all to frequently 
neglected. To study Latin seven years and French one, as 
was my own experience, is not particularly conducive to a 
knowledge of French. Second, the derivation of a majority of 
our English words may be traced to Latin or Greek, and it is 
unquestionable that by their study the meaning of, at any rate, 
the more unusual English words may be more readily appreciated. 
Here again there is danger of overstatement. If the classics 
are good, the dictionary is better. A man classically trained can 
define approximately the word "exiguous," but to become 
acquainted with its finer subtleties and literary use an appeal 
to Murray is still desirable. 

Finally, in behalf of the classics the argument may in justice 
be made that not only do they introduce us to a great and 
flourishing civilization, but that also by their study the classical 



LATIN AND GREEK 209 

allusions in English literature are made clear. This argument 
is readily answered. If the time spent in the study of Latin 
composition alone was given to the classics in translations, it 
would provide a more thorough basis for the recognition of 
mythological allusions, and a better appreciation of the civiliza- 
tion, of the ancient world. 

The weary hours spent in the pursuit of the dead languages 
are not so much to be regretted as the loss, perhaps irreparable, 
of more catholic and useful knowledge. From a large part of 
that glorious literary, historical, and philosophical Renaissance 
of the twentieth century, Latin and Greek have all but debarred 
me. To read Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Eucken, and Anatole 
France, one needs more than a reading knowledge of French 
and German; one needs a feeling knowledge as well, an ability 
to think, aye, and to dream, in the two great languages of the 
Continent. I cannot do that, and perhaps may never do it, and 
well I know the futility of picking my way through a living 
tongue even as a child deciphers his first story books. What 
consolation is it to read the Pauline Epistles in the original 
Greek, or the little, unauthoritative pamphlet by Tacitus on the 
habits of the early Germans? 

Hardly, indeed, could we find an assumption more absurd 
than to expect the undergraduate to familiarize himself with 
four foreign languages, two living and two dead. It may be 
done. The college may turn out a linguistic automaton, with 
mind blank to chemistry, history, economics, and psychology; 
but the result is too dreadful to contemplate. As it is, the 
scientific training of most of us poor bachelors of art is desultory 
and picayune. The only science that I was taught was a little 
biology and geology; but slender as is the knowledge, I cling 
to it with great affection. The broadening effect of even one 
science is incalculable. When I compare the glorious vistas thai 
historic geology laid open before my very soul with Plato's story 
of the death of Socrates — and there is nothing finer in Greek 
literature — I stand unhesitatingly by the geology. A trilobite 
is preferable to a second aorist. He, at any rate, is animate. 
And to think that had it not been for the pornographic plays of 
Terence, some knowledge of astronomy or botany might have 
been mine! 

The indictment of Latin or Greek does not culminate with 
the neglect of modern languages or of science. The implanting 



210 SELECTED ARTICLES 

of culture even in its narrowest and most intensive meaning, as 
defined in the ancient belief that "the glory of the classics is 
that they teach nothing useful," is sadly impaired by the stress 
laid upon the dead languages. I refer to the field of aesthetics. 
Nothing, probably, could ever have taught me to carry a tune, 
but there is no reason why certain rudiments of music should 
not have been given me. I have always had a curiosity to 
know what counterpoint is. Sculpture, one suspects, is confined 
generally to young ladies' seminaries. Architecture may perhaps 
receive one day's attention in a general history of western 
Europe. Painting does well to meet with equal emphasis, and 
landscape gardening certainly is unknown. Why should there 
be no general course in aesthetics? Why should our boys and 
girls be uninstructed in the art of Rodin, or less familiar with 
the Rheims cathedral than with the Parthenon? Is the mental 
discipline of the classics a sufficient answer? 

A charge far graver is the inexcusable neglect of contempo- 
raneous social knowledge and science which the classics foster. 
Are not the mind-widening influences of the opening of South 
America and the unlocking of Asia more significant to us than 
the adventures of Dido and ^Eneas? Can any problems be so 
important as those of our own generation? By every code of 
ethics, Christian or otherwise, man serves his fellow-man, and 
to do that he must understand with a sympathetic wisdom the 
circumstances of his daily life. To right existent wrong; to 
straighten up, clean out and make over, the crooked, muddled, 
and diseased plague-centers of society, one must know what 
they are, where they are, and how they came into being. 
Without such knowledge true leadership is impossible, and to 
demand leadership in an educated class without these qualifica- 
tions is fatuous. The makers of a future America will know 
what is wrong and how to better it. If they do not come from 
the college they will come from elsewhere, and the college 
graduate will be relegated to the garret— a garret where the 
regalia of the Merovingian kings and even their influence will 
be entirely lacking. This article makes no pretense to postulate 
in full those categories of present-day information that should 
be the minimum equipment of the college graduate. It is, how- 
ever, of prime importance for him to know the general conditions 
under which the work of the world is done ; the hours and the 
remuneration of labor; the dangers of the various trades and 



LATIN AND GREEK 21 1 

the methods of preventing them; the protection, or the lack of 
it, afforded to the child and the woman; the treatment by 
society of the criminal, the pauper, the tramp, the emigrant, and 
the idle man of property. An intimate understanding of our 
own country there must be, while the phenomenal advance made 
by western Europe within our own generation may not be 
overlooked. Whether we taste of the fruit of the tree of good 
and evil or not, we must be aware of its existence. There can 
be no escape from the Egypt of economic bondage and moral 
iniquity into the land of Canaan, the blest, without knowing 
Egypt. For a boy or a girl to graduate from college entirely 
unfamiliar with the tide of European democracy onsurging 
throughout the last thirty years is unpardonable. But for a 
boy or girl to graduate from college in total ignorance of the 
intolerable conditions under which some men and women earn 
their living in this country of ours, and of the disguised child 
slavery before our eyes, is a disgrace. 

The plea for a classic basis of education is but the expression 
of a spirit among certain educators that is unfair and injurious 
to the sensitive intelligence over which they have unfortunate 
authority. Mr. H. G. Wells in his brilliant little essay "The 
Discovery of the Future" has distinguished between "the legal 
or submissive type of mind," with its sacrosanct veneration for 
"treaties, constitutions, legitimacies, and charters," and the 
"legislative, creative, organizing, or masterful type which is 
perpetually attacking and altering the established order of 
things" ; the mind "that sees the world as one great workshop, 
and the present as no more than material for the future . . . 
for the thing that is yet destined to be." If this generalization 
is just, and I think that, taken broadly, none can dispute it, it is 
a piteous fact that the former type of mind should so generally 
prevail among the teachers of our youth. Assuredly it is an 
axiomatic truth that the index of human progress is found in 
the advance of one generation over another, in the development 
of finer men and women. It is in the future only that our 
hopes lie; why, then, deliberately blindfold young eyes to the 
coming years and to the immediate present, the womb of the 
future, immerse their souls in the aspirations of the dead, and 
gloss over with the muddy varnish of worn-out "idealogies" the 
atrocities of modern life and the courageous nobility of those 
who combat them? 



212 SELECTED ARTICLES 

It is to be regretted that at the present there is something of 
a lull in the fight for educational reform. The hard-pressed 
conservative, driven out of his Greek, 1 has intrenched himself 
with his Latin in the snuggest of earthworks, while the radical, 
content with partial victory, has abated the attack. Eternal 
effort, however, there must be, for, by the laws of all things, 
failure to advance spells retrogression, and of late the apologists 
of the old order, emboldened by the preliminary lack of synthesis 
and discipline — an unfortunate accompaniment- of the elective 
system — have displayed renewed activity. The distinguished 
scholar, Mr. Gilbert Murray, has recently told us how fond the 
British workman has become of Greek. A pamphlet supposedly 
representing an entire college class has been widely and semi- 
officially circulated within the last few years, advocating in all 
seriousness certain fallacious and mischievous aphorisms of 
Edmund Burke, the scholastic shoddiness of which reason and 
experience have long since laid bare. Furthermore, in our 
great preparatory schools, rapidly growing in size and social 
prestige, there has been a constant tendency to imitate those 
methods of English education which in modern Britain have 
borne such deleterious fruitage, and in this country ere long 
will cause it to be said that the value of a young American's 
training varies in inverse ratio to the fashionableness of his 
education. 

The comment of the future historian on our educational 
system existent at the beginning of the twentieth century would 
be grim reading to us of the present. It is true that here and 
there the light of a happier day is breaking. Amherst College, 
has had the temerity to announce for the next academic year a 
course in social and economic institutions for freshmen. In 
the new Columbia School of Journalism throughout a four 
years' course no Latin or Greek is required or expected, and 
it is thought that the graduates will write good English. A 
glance at the historical laboratory of Columbia College will 

1 A contrary view, published since this article was written, by Dean 
West, of the Princeton Graduate College, appears in the "Educational 
Review" for March, 1Q14. Statistics are marshaled by Professor West 
to demonstrate the utility of Greek by proving that those students who 
have studied it average better in their general work than those who have 
not. Might it not be fair to question this assumption by offering two 
other explanations: one, that the boys who have studied Greek come 
from families in which an academic tradition and environment tend to 
produce a better type of scholarship; the other, that there is a constant 
tendency in the preparation schools to press upon the brighter students 
the desirability of a training in Greek? 



LATIN AND GREEK 213 

show, almost any day, eager and enthusiastic students working 
overtime on the filing of contemporaneous European news- 
papers, demonstrating once and for all the falsity of the asser- 
tion current with certain educators that the study of the present 
is "spineless pap," without discipline or consistency. These 
"barber sugeons of the mind," who make no distinction, in their 
muddled intellectual processes, between labor as such and disci- 
plined, rational effort, must be driven from their fastnesses, or 
else forced to realize that labor without reason or utility is 
degrading to all that is fine in the spirit of man. We no longer 
have the treadmill in our prisons ; some day there will be 
nothing that resembles it in our schools. We have struck our 
camp and have begun the march; but the fight for a thorough- 
going reformation has but just begun. As the situation is at 
present, the study of our own day, vitally essential to good 
citizenship, is entirely omitted from most preparatory schools, 
and is little more than a junior or senior elective in those 
colleges that pay to it any attention ; whereas the study of the 
remote past, the true logical elective, is, in our Eastern colleges, 
almost everywhere compulsory. Until this condition of affairs 
is substantially reversed the radical reformer will never stand 
content. 



EXAMPLES OF DEAD LANGUAGE 
PROPAGANDA 1 

Shall We Return to Greek f 1 

Some few years ago, after centuries of the study of Greek, 
this language was dropped from the course in English schools. 
Since the close of the war, however, it was decided by the Eng- 
lish ministry that this study which had done its work so efficiently 
in educating the orators, empire builders, statesmen and literary 
men of England, was too valuable to be dropped and if has ac- 
cordingly been reinstated. 

Thus it is that the field of education has been the scene of 
countless experiments. Particularly during the last twenty-five 
years, there has been a succession of new studies introduced into 

1 This and the following article appeared unsigned in the December 20, 
1920, number of West High issued bi-weekly by the students of the West 
High School, Cleveland, Ohio. 



214 SELECTED ARTICLES 

the curricula of the high schools of our country. The position 
has constantly been taken that the public purse should be used 
to provide the means whereby those studies -could be pursued 
which are supposed to be best fitted for educating the pupil to do 
some work which would enable him to make his living in the 
world. 

With this thought in view equipments have been provided on 
such an elaborate scale that the cost of educating its youth has 
become an exceedingly expensive work for the state. Thus the 
educational work of the present is in strange contrast with the 
simplicity of the past when a far less number of studies was 
pursued. 

Teachers and public education officials are constantly made 
aware of the great diversity of talents represented in the stu- 
dent body of our high schools. Here there is great danger of 
spoiling a first class professional man by making a second class 
mechanic and vice versa. Opportunity should be provided for all. 
Among all the various types presented in a select body of youths 
is that minority class which is destined to become influential 
members of society, to dominate the professions, to do much of 
its writing, speaking 'and thinking, and from its sanity of judg- 
ment and discriminating powers, is sure to "become the safe 
leader in the political affairs of the state. The education of this 
class is of the very highest practical importance, if we do not 
wish our artisans and working people to become the prey of <T red- 
leadership." 

To this splendid minority class the study of Greek, with its 
matchless . masterpieces, provides most admirable training. We 
must not neglect this type of young men and women in any wise 
course of study. 

If we could constantly have two or three classes at West High 
which would be students of this language, its art, its beauty and 
refinement, we should find that nothing would do so much to 
foster earnest effort, to raise our standards, to aid in seeking for 
the things that are really worth while, and to give tone and eleva- 
tion to our whole course. 

Shall we not then lend our efforts to foster this enterprise 
among our other excellent activities and start our next semester 
with a splendid class in Greek that shall contain what such classes 
always have in the past the real "salt of the earth?" 



LATIN AND GREEK 215 

Eruptions from Room 1 

"To him that hath shall be given." Thus sayeth Mr. Blank. 
This fact was demonstrated to us in the auditorium Monday 
morning, December 13th. We have often heard from the afore 
mentioned teacher, that one can get "nowhere" (i. e. reach the 
gates of Heaven) if one does not study Latin. 

Gertrude R. a member of the Senior Virgil class, gave an 
oration on the benefits of Latin and Evelyn B. recited a poem. 
Violet A. gave 123 rd psalm in Latin. A dialogue entitled "Hescio 
Quid in Oculum Incidit" was glibly recited by Floyd H. and 
Harold B. 

Richard N. stirred his audience a second time by delivering 
Anthony's funeral address over the bier of Caesar. The follow- 
ing girls, Laura W., Emilie D., Grace R., Vivienne R., Sarah M., 
Sarah R., and Isabelle B., sang a Latin song, "Three Boys At 
Play." Vivienne R. sang a Latin Lullaby. 

The final number on the program was a one act play "The 
Exetus Helvetiorium" presented by the Freshmen Latin Class. 

Classical Languages 1 

The study of classical languages is not to be dispensed with 
if druTwishes a complete education. We cannot hope to attain 
a high standard of scholarship if we are to be disconnected from 
the extraordinary benefit derived from the works of ancient 
writers. To be familiar with Greek and Latin is an admittance 
to the highest ranks of culture. 

The fundamental qualities of modern literature are practically 
identical with those of Greek and Roman productions. Therefore 
is it not necessary to acquire a knowledge of ancient languages to 
become a proficient student of English' 1 ? 

Possibly you may call them "dead" languages ; but do you 
realize that being able to translate them carries an intellectual 
advancement from generation to generation? 

Probably it may add an hour or so to your accustomed time 
of mental occupation. However, the time consumed would be 
most advantageous, if you aspire to be anything other than an 
office clerk or manual laborer. 

1 From the Blue and Gold, published weekly by the students at the 
East High School, Cleveland, O. This was written by a second year 
student and appeared under his name on November 16, 1916. 



BRIEF EXCERPTS 

Latin and Greek do not teach us how to write our own 
language. Cloudesley Brereton, Nineteenth Century 83 :82i 
Ap. '18. 

The learning of a language has a value according to the 
use that we are to make of it. Alexander Bain, Education as 
a Science, p. 167. 

The study of the classical languages forms a positive bar \ 
to real acquaintance with classical literature. Prof. Edward 
0. Sisson, School Review 15 1508 Sept. '07. 

Throughout his after-career a boy, in nine cases out of ten, 
applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. Herbert 
Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, p. 7. 

Studying to think in a dead language is shackling, the mind, 
instead of liberating it, and must lead not to a free but to an 
arrested development. Paul R. Shipman, Popular Science 
Monthly 17:148, June 1880. 

Multitudes in both of these professions (law and medicine) 
rise to eminence without eithe; Latin or Greek, to say nothing 
at all of the whole college course. Rev. Dr. B. H. Nadal, 
Methodist Quarterly 49:227, April 1867. 

During the time expended on the classical course, a man 
of average ability could acquire a speaking and reading famil- 
iarity with certainly two of the Romance languages. John J. 
Stevenson, School and Society 10:164, Aug. 9, 1919- 

The cultivation of the Latin and Greek languages is a great 
obstacle to the cultivation and perfection of the English lan- 
guage. Dr. Benjamin Rush, Essays: Literary, Moral and 
Philosophical, p. 25. 



LATIN AND GREEK 217 

It is psychologically impossible to pass through the appren- 
ticeship stage of learning foreign languages at the age when 
the vernacular is setting without crippling it. Ransom A. Mackie, 
Education during Adolescence, p. 99. 

To many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot 
lie through Latin or even Greek, because the old language hangs 
like a veil between them and the thought within. Arthur C. 
Benson, From a College Window p. 163. 

As to the matter of the discipline to be got out of Greek, 
we think that is largely nonsense. Discipline comes equally in 
hard study whether Greek or German or Chemistry. The 
Independent {editorial) 35:1009, Aug. 9, 1883. 

The principal defect in the present system of our great 
schools is that they devote too large a portion of time to Latin 
and Greek. R. L. Edge-worth, Essays on Professional Educa- 
tion. (London, 1812) p. 49. 

The boasted discipline of classical education for the atten- 
tion and reasoning powers may be quite as well obtained from 
studies which touch more closely the practical life of the great 
mass of the population. Nicholas Murray Butler, The Mean- 
ing of Education p. 174. 

I may avow as a result of my reading and observation in 
the matter of education, that I recognize but one mental acquisi- 
tion as an essential part of the education of a lady or a gentle- 
man, — namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother-tongue. 
Charles W. Eliot, Popular Science Monthly 17:145, June 1880. 

For all those who mean to make science their serious occu- 
pation ; or who intend to follow the profession of medicine ; or 
who have to enter early upon the business of life; for all these, 
in my opinion, classical education is a mistake. Thomas H. 
Huxley, Science and Education p. 153. 

We have no classical Latin that is suitable for boys. This 
is a strong objection to giving it a place in the lower schools. 
Almost all the Latin read in both school and college deals with 






218 SELECTED ARTICLES 

war and politics. Besides, it is too difficult for beginners. 
Charles W. Super, Popular Science Monthly 77:565, Dec. 1910. 

The methods and content of Latin instruction in most 
American liberal colleges are destined soon to undergo radical 
changes if that instruction is to make in future valid claims to 
the attention of any considerable number of undergraduates. 
Prof. Henry W. Litchfield, Classical Journal 14:6, Oct. 1918. 

' Greek and Latin have little value on the information side, 
except in special studies, inasmuch as the information which 
they contain can be acquired much more easily and thoroughly 
through translations. John F. Brown, The American High 
School, p. 108. 

Even in the most modern public schools the classical teachers 
are picking over the boys, and any boy who can possibly be saved 
from the Modern side and kept on the Classical is so kept. H. G. 
Wells, in Lankester's Natural Science and the Classical System 
in Education, p. 202. 

Languages have no value in themselves ; they exist solely for 
the purpose of communicating ideas and abreviating our thought 
and action processes. If studied, they are valuable only in so 
far as they are practically mastered — not otherwise. Abraham 
Flexner. A Modern School, p. 13. 

No one denies that the author of the Iliad had marvelous 
skill in description, but not a few have regretted that a writer 
of such ability had no better subject than the quarrels and 
combats of lustful savages, whose exploits, so vividly pictured, 
are those of mere brutes. John J. Stevenson, Popular Science^ 
Monthly 77:555 Dec. 1910. 

Our colleges, theological schools and academies are yielding 
to our ministry a small per centum of thoroughly trained 
classical scholars, mingled with some quite well trained by their 
own private efforts, and a still larger number who, without 
Greek or Latin, are good plain preachers and laborious pastors. 
Rev. Dr. B. H. Nadal, Methodist Quarterly 49:229, April 1867 



LATIN AND GREEK 219 

But the obvious way to master our mother-tongue is to 
study that, and not the mother-tongue of somebody else — to 
study it in its own masterpieces, not excluding indeed its adopted 
ones, whether from the Greek or Latin or any other original, but 
studying these in its own idioms, forms, and words, not in theirs. 
Paul R. Shipman, Popular Science Monthly 17:149, June 1880. 

Shall we be told, as usual, that the best way to learn English 
is to study Latin and Greek? The answer is, that the facts do 
not corroborate this improbable hypothesis. American youth 
in large numbers study Latin and Greek, but do not thereby 
learn English. Charles W. Eliot, Century Magazine 28:206, 
June 1884. 

As compared with science, Latin is not only cheap, but an 
easy subject to teach. In few branches does a little knowledge 
go so far with a teacher, and in few can it be used in such an 
imposing way to drill and break in boys on a small capital of 
knowledge on the teacher's part. G. Stanley Hall, School Re- 
view 9:657 Dec. 1901. 

While more secondary pupils in this country take Latin 
than any other topics, save algebra alone, more drop it soon 
and forget it more completely than is the case with any other 
topic. More boys drop Latin and also drop out of high school 
from this than is the case with any other subject. G. Stanley 
Hall, New England Magazine n.s. 37:170, Oct. 1907. 

The result, at all events, is that the majority of boys in our 
schools never get the idea that they are in the presence of 
literature at all. They are kept kicking their heels in the dark 
and cold antechamber of parsing and grammar, and never get 
a glimpse of the bright garden within. A. C. Benson, The 
House of Quiet. 

When the Government takes over things the fur flies. But 
who would ever have expected to live to see all the American 
Colleges and Universities opening this week with the classics 
abandoned, the secret societies abolished, athletics reduced to 
recreation and the students made to study. It all seems too 
sensible to be true. Independent {editorial) 96:41, Oct. 12, 1918. 



220 SELECTED ARTICLES 

The first three centuries of the Christian era had before 
their eyes the light of the classics and the wisdom of the 
ancients; but they went steadily from bad to worse. The last 
three' centuries have had modern literature and the useful sciences 
and arts, and have gone steadily from good to better. Dr. 
Jacob Bigelow, Modern Inquiries, p. 46. 

To make the classics easy is no part of our duty. Only flabby- 
minded pupils wish for easy subjects, and these are not worthy 
of our attention. For them one might recommend a three year 
course in bookkeeping and stenography as being possibly within 
the range of their mental powers. Editorial, Classical Journal, 
13: 147. Dec. 191 7. 

Among the efforts to stimulate interest in the classics in high 
schools, especially in the middle and far west, may be enumerated 
classical clubs, Roman banquets, Latin games, plays in the orig- 
inal Greek and Latin (though oftener in translation) dramatiza- 
tions of Vergil, Caesar, Horace, etc. Classical Weekly 5:1 Oct. 
7, 1911. 

A dead language is the Dead Sea of thought, if it may not 
be more aptly likened to the Sea of Tranquillity in the moon. 
We think in our mother-tongue only, through which only, there- 
fore, our self-activity is determined, and by which only, for 
that reason, we cultivate our minds. Our mother-tongue is the 
sole medium of our mental development. Paul R. Shipman, 
Popular Science Monthly, 17:148 June 1880. 

One of the main reasons for poor English in high school, 
is because of the excessive time given to other languages just 
at the psychological period of greatest linguistic plasticity and 
capacity of growth. Dr. G. Stanley Hall aptly says, "Very grave 
is the danger that the idiomatic use of the mother tongue will 
be destroyed by 'translation English.' Ransom A. Mackie, 
Education During Adolescence p. 99. 

It has been said that six months of the language of 
Schiller and Goethe will now open to the student more high 
enjoyment than six years' study of the languages of Greece and 
Rome. It is certain that six months' study of French will now 



LATIN AND GREEK 221 

open to the student more of Europe than six years study of 
that which was once the European tongue. Goldwin Smith, 
Lectures on History. 

I hold very strongly by two convictions, — The first is, that 
neither the discipline nor the subject matter of classical educa- 
tion is of such direct value to the student of physical science as 
to justify the expenditure of valuable time upon either; and the 
second is, that for the purpose of attaining real culture, an 
exclusiv ely scientific education is at least as effectual as an 
exclusiv ely literary education. Thomas H. Huxley, Science and 
Education, p. 141. 

To my mind the only justification of any kind of discipline, 
training, or drill is attainment of the appropriate end of that 
discipline. It is a waste for society, and an outrage upon the 
individual, to make a boy spend the years when he is most 
teachable in a discipline the end of which he can never reach, 
when he might have spent them in a different discipline, which 
would have been rewarded by achievement. Charles W. Eliot, 
Educational Reform p. 117. 

As soon as public opinion began to consider it the function 
of the State to carry the child through the additional years of 
secondary schooling, not as a privilege for the individual, but 
as a State duty, then the obsoleteness of Latin as a school 
subject became apparent. Whatever its cultural value for the 
individual, the current educational criticism considers Latin as 
distinctly unnecessary in a people's school, and a relatively 
strong group of critics would reject it entirely. U. S. Com- 
missioner of Education, Annual Report for 1912, p. 9. 

Wealth or property is the complement of classical training, 
and the young man surfeited with the latter and minus the 
former is at a serious disadvantage when pitted against the 
young man with both, as witness the abject failures of hundreds 
of young men who leave our colleges and universities, their heads 
crammed with Latin and Greek, their pockets empty. If unfitted 
tempormentally for teaching, they are apt to be quite as badly 
equipped for earning a living as when they entered college. 
Lapp, John A. and Mote, Carl H. Learning to Earn. p. 349-5°. 



222 SELECTED ARTICLES 

There are too many histories, too many new sciences with ap- 
plications of great importance, and too many new literatures of 
high merit which have a variety of modern uses, to permit any- 
one, not bound to the classics by affectionate associations and 
educational tradition, to believe that Latin can maintain the place 
it has held for centuries in the youthful training of educated men, 
a place which it acquired when it was the common speech of 
scholars and has held for centuries without any such good reason. 
Charles W. Eliot. Latin and the A. B. Degree, p. 15. 

The study of Latin cannot tell us what the English language 
is — it can help us to understand how it has come to be what it 
is. In order to learn to speak English with accuracy and 
precision, we have but one rule to follow, — to pay strict attention 
to usage. The authority of usage, the usage of cultivated 
persons, is in all disputed points paramount. ... In the case 
of words that we have derived from the Latin, the meaning 
of the Latin term has often been so modified that it would 
be the merest pedantry to pay attention to it. Henry Sidgwick, 
Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses, p. 283. 

Fifty years ago the standards of the best colleges, such as 
Harvard and Yale, were no better than the high school of 
today. Then the curriculum was filled with rubbish which the 
instructors characterized as "mental exercises," such as theo- 
retical problems and language conjugations. Now education has 
taken a trend toward the practical. Shorthand replaces "amo, 
amas, amat." We have learned successful co-ordination of 
mind and body, and the mental exercises have been discarded. 
President Arthur Holmes, of Drake University, Des Moines 
Register, Feb. 13, 1920. 

The average classical graduate, as far as the writer's very 
extensive experience tells him, uses no better English than the 
average graduate in science. Indeed it would be easy to make 
an imposing list of authors to prove that classical training is 
unnecessary; few writers in England and America have excelled 
G. W. Curtis, Lawrence Hutton, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, 
R. W. Gilder, J. G. Holland, R. H. Stoddard, H. T. Tuckerman, 
G. P. Lathrop, and William Winter, yet, if the published biog- 
raphies be true, these were not college men and some of them 
had only limited opportunity in secondary schools. John J. 
Stevenson, School and Society 10:164, April 9, 1919- 



LATIN AND GREEK 223 

If a man cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out 
of his Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and 
Hobbes, and Bishop Berkeley, to mention only a few of our 
illustrious writers — I say, if he cannot get it out of those writers, 
he cannot get it out of anything; and I would assuredly devote 
a large portion of the time of every English child to the careful 
study of the models of English writing of such varied and 
wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still more important 
and still more neglected, the habit of using that language with 
precision, with force, and with art. Thomas H. Huxley, Science 
and Education, p. 185. 

Notwithstanding our emphasis on classical subjects, we have 
little to show for our pains in this particular. We have pro- 
duced a very few men of world eminence in art or literature. 
Although our scientists have produced epochal inventions and 
have made some revolutionary discoveries, almost invariably they 
owe little of their genius or inspiration to our school system. 
Our curriculum does not foster scientific research in the indus- 
trial world, and our development in this particular is due largely 
to our great natural resources. This development, in spite of the 
curriculum, has furnished the invitation to science and invention. 
The school system has done little. Lapp, John A. and Mote, Carl 
H. Learning to Earn. p. 353. 

The modern world unquestionably owes much to Greece 
and Rome but much less than many would have us believe. The 
shackles forged by the Greek and Roman intellect crippled 
development after the revival of learning and centuries passed 
before men succeeded in casting them off. One must concede 
unhesitatingly the brilliancy of many ancient writers, but that 
is not to say that they excelled or even equalled those of 
modern times. Modern thinkers excel those of the classic 
world, because the horizon is farther away; just as civilized man 
with many concepts excels the Greenlander or Hottentot with 
his few concepts. And it may be said in passing that Greek civil- 
ization was not self-originated. It was but the full blossoming 
of Egypt and Babylonia, a blossoming which ignored the trunk 
and roots whence it was derived. John J. Stevenson, Popular 
Science Monthly 77:557, Dec. 1910. 



224 SELECTED ARTICLES 

Perfected by the Jesuits and imitated by the rest of the 
world, this classical training, which reigned until this century 
and has only slowly been displaced from its seat, is a most 
interesting devise of control over the middle and ruling classes. 
For a pyramidal society putting a severe strain on obedience, 
the safest and best education is one that wears away the energies 
of youth in mental gymnastics, directs the glance toward the 
past, cultivates the memory rather than the reason, gives polish 
rather than power, encourages acquiesence rather than inquiry, 
and teaches to versify rather than to think. It is natural that 
teachers in meeting such requirements should construct a system 
that favors the humanities rather than the sciences, literature 
and language rather than history, and the forms of literature 
rather than the substance. Prof. Edward A. Ross, Social 
Control, p 171-2. 

The doctrine that a knowledge of Latin is indispensable to 
real acquaintance with the great literatures of the world is diffi- 
cult — indeed impossible — to maintain before American boys and 
girls whose native language is that of Shakespeare and Milton, 
of Franklin and Lincoln, of Gibbon and Macaulay, of Scott, 
Burns, and Tennyson, and of Emerson and Lowell. English 
literature is incomparably richer, more various, and ampler in re- 
spect to both form and substance than the literature of either 
Greece or Rome. One of the most interesting and influential 
forms of English literature, namely, fiction as developed in the 
historical romance, the novel, and the short story, has no exist- 
ence in Greek and Roman literature ; and the types of both poetry 
and oratory in English are both more varied and more beautiful 
than those of Greece and Rome. Charles IV. Eliot. Latin and 
the A. B. Degree, p. 14. 

When Herbert Spencer seventy years ago said that science 
was the subject best worth knowing, the schoolmasters and uni- 
versity professors in England paid no attention to his words. 
The long years of comparative peace, and of active manufactur- 
ing and trading which the British Empire since that date enjoyed 
did something to give practical effect in British education to 
Spencer's dictum. The present war has demonstrated its truth to 
all thinking men in Europe and America. It now clearly appears 
that science is the knowledge best worth having, not only for its 
direct effects in promoting the material welfare of mankind, but 



LATIN AND GREEK 225 

also for its power to strengthen the moral purposes of mankind, 
to apply its method of accurate observation and inductive reason- 
ing to all inquiries and problems, and to make possible a secure 
civilization founded on justice, the sanctity of contracts, and 
good-will. Charles W. Eliot. Latin and the A. B. Degree, p. 10. 

At the time of the revival of literature no man could, 
without great and painful labor, acquire an accurate and elegant 
knowledge of the ancient languages ; and unfortunately those 
grammatical and philological studies, without which it were 
impossible to understand the great works of the Athenian and 
Roman genius, have a tendency to contract the views and 
deaden the sensibility of those who follow them with extreme 
assiduity. A powerful mind which has long been employed 
in such studies may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the 
Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to small 
dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and 
when his prison had been closed upon him fancied himself 
unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the measure of 
which he had reduced his stature. When the means have long 
been the objects of application, they are naturally substituted for 
the end. Lord Macaulay, Essay on the Athenian Orators. 

If I am to understand by that term (literary education) 
the education that was current in the great majority of middle 
class schools, and upper schools too, in this country (England) 
when I was a boy, and which consisted absolutely and almost 
entirely in keeping boys for eight or ten years at learning the 
rules of Latin and Greek grammar, construing certain Latin and 
Greek authors, and possibly making verses, which, had they 
been English verses, would have been condemned as abominable 
doggerel, — if that is what you mean by liberal education, then 
I say it is scandalously insufficient and almost worthless. . . . 
It was not literature at all that was taught, but science in a very 
bad form. It is quite obvious that grammar is science and not 
literature. The analysis of a text by the help of the rules of 
grammar is just as much a scientific operation as the analysis 
of a chemical compound by the help of the rules of chemical 
analysis. Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Education, p. 180-1. 

But if the classics were taught as they might be taught — 
if boys and girls were instructed in Greek and Latin, not 



226 SELECTED ARTICLES 

merely as languages, but as illustrations of philological science; 
if a vivid picture of life on the shores of the Mediterranean 
two thousand years ago were imprinted on the minds of scholars ; 
if ancient history were taught, not as a weary series of feuds 
and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed under 
such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were 
followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their 
beauties, and with the grand simplicity of their statement of the 
everlasting problems of human life, instead of with their verbal 
and grammatical peculiarities; I still think it as little proper 
that they should form the basis of a liberal education for our 
contemporaries, as I should think it fitting to make that sort of 
palaeontology with which I am familiar that back-bone of 
modern education. Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Education, 
P- 98. 

Once the student cuts entirely loose from real objects, and 
spends his days among diacritical marks, irregular conjugations 
and distinctions without a difference, his orientation is lost. 
The average American boy quits the high school in disgust 
because he cannot interpret its work in work in terms of life, — 
he cannot see how its work is related to the world of things as 
they are. The languages, ancient and modern, have a high value 
to those who can master and use them, for every new language 
opens to a man a new world and the influence of a new civil- 
ization. Most high school students get very little from any 
of them, and the one intellectually most important, the Greek, 
is practically excluded from our secondary schools as being of 
least practical value. Without in the least underrating the 
value of Latin to "roman-minded" men, who make a manly use 
of it, there is no doubt that the average American high school 
boy gets less out of Latin than out of any other subject in the 
curriculum. We may regret this, but we must face it as a fact. 
David Starr Jordon, Popular Science Monthly J2> : 30-i, July 1908. 

After the Reformation the English universities cease to 
be the organs of the general intellectual life, and shrank to be 
merely the educational preserves of the aristocracy and the 
church. Jews, Roman Catholics, dissenters, sceptics, and all 
forms of intellectual activity were carefully barred out from 
these almost extinguished lamps of learning. Their mathemat- 
ical work was poor, a series of exercises in the mere patience- 



LATIN AND GREEK 227 

games and formulae-writing of lower mathematics ; science they 
despised and excluded, and their staple training was the study, 
without any archaeology or historical perspective, of the more 
rhetorical and "poetic" of the Latin and Greek classics. Such 
a training prepared men not so much to tackle and solve the 
problems of life, as to plaster them over with more or less apt 
quotations. It turned the mind away from living contemporary 
things; it showed the world reflected in a distorting mirror of 
bad historical analogies ; all the fated convergencies of history 
were refracted into false parallels. H. G. Wells, The Outlini 
of History, Vol. II, p. 428. 

He (Benjamin Franklin) anticipated the revolt against the 
classics which has come in our own day and which has relegated 
Latin and Greek into the region of the dead. It is not inex- 
pedient to say that his idea of studying only such languages as 
will be of utility to those who pursue them is the correct prin- 
ciple in this department of education. In conformity with his 
notion we have the modern elective course, which is the practical 
result of his challenge of the advantage and utility of compel- 
ling all persons who pursue higher education to pursue the 
same subject in the same way for different ends. . . . When 
he pleaded for the study of modern languages and the relegation 
of Latin and Greek to a secondary place, he was confronting and 
challenging the scholastic world. The first struggle between 
the old system and Franklin's ideas of the new education occurred 
in Philadelphia in the very institution which he had been 
instrumental in founding, and the story of that struggle was 
told by Franklin himself two years before his death. Francis 
N. Thorpe, Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 
1902, Vol. 2, p. 1 17-18. 

Not only, however, for intellectual discipline is science the 
best ; but also for moral discipline. The learning of languages 
tends, if anything, further to increase the already undue respect 
for authority. Such and such are the meanings of these words, 
says the teacher or the dictionary. So and so is the rule in this 
case, says the grammar. By the pupil these dicta are received as 
unquestionable. His constant attitude of mind is that of sub- 
mission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary result is a ten- 
dency to accept without inquiry whatever is established. Quite 
opposite is the attitude of mind generated by the cultivation of 



228 SELECTED ARTICLES 

science. By science, constant appeal is made to individual reason. 
Its truths are not accepted upon authority alone; but all are at 
liberty to test them — nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to 
think out his own conclusions. Every step in a scientific investi- 
gation is submitted to his judgment. He is not asked to admit 
it without seeing it to be true. And the trust in his own powers 
thus produced, is further increased by the constancy with which 
Nature justifies his conclusions when they are correctly drawn. 
From all of which there flows that independence which is a most 
valuable element in character. Herbert Spencer. Education ; In- 
tellectual, Moral, and Physical, p. 79-80. 

'I think that a course of instruction in our own language and 
literature, and a course of instruction in natural science, ought 
to form recognised and substantive parts of our school system.' 
'I think also that more stress ought to be laid on the study of 
French.' To make room for these additions, the obvious remedy 
is 'to exclude Greek from the curriculum, at least in its earlier 
stage.' 'It is supposed that there is a saving of time in begin- 
ning the study of Greek early. I am inclined to think that 
very much the reverse is the case, and that, if several languages 
have to be learnt, much time is gained by untying the faggot 
and breaking them separately. There are two classes for whom 
the present system of education is more or less natural, — the 
clergy, and persons with a literary bias and the prospect of 
sufficient leisure to indulge it amply. Boys with such prospects, 
and a previous training of the kind I advocate, would in the 
average feel, as they approached the last stage of their school 
life, an interest in Greek strong enough to make them take to it 
very rapidly.' 'The advantage that young children have over 
young men in catching a spoken language, has led some to infer 
that they have an equal superiority in learning to read a language 
that they do not hear spoken ; an inference which, I think, is 
contrary to experience.' Henry Sidgwick, in Bain "Education 
as a Science," p. 387. 

The Greeks themselves were acquainted with no foreign 
tongue. Did they know nothing of their own? They declined 
to seek culture in "self-alienation," as they might have done, 
by studying to think in the idioms and to give their thoughts 
the forms and words of the Pelasgians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, 
or Persians, although some of them, it is true, when already 



LATIN AND GREEK 229 

cultivated, picked up what they thought worth taking among 
the intellectual possessions of these people, as was sensible; 
but their own language was the exclusive instrument of their 
culture, as the study of it was their exclusive means of knowing 
it. The "special-culture study" of the Greeks was their mother- 
tongue; and the method that sufficed for them — which trained 
Homer, Socrates, Plato, Thucydides, Demosthenes — will suffice 
for us. "It has sufficed for us. Shakespeare, the greatest master 
of expression that the race has produced, knew no tongue but 
his own; and from the solar splendor of this supreme instance 
the argument, as no English scholar need be told, shades down- 
ward through one radiant name after another in the firmament 
of our literature. And the method is vindicated by not less 
significant products in other tongues, as witness, notably, the 
Icelandic "Njala," a biographical work at once of surpassing 
excellence in style and. of purely native culture. Paul R. Ship- 
man, Popular Science Monthly 17:151, June 1880. 

And here we see most distinctly the vice of our educational 
system. It neglects the plant for the sake of the flower. In 
anxiety for elegance, it forgets substance. While it gives no 
knowledge conducive to self-preservation — while of knowledge 
that facilitates gaining a livelihood it gives but the rudiments, and 
leaves the greater part to be picked up any how in after life — 
while for the discharge of parental functions it makes not the 
slightest provision — and while for the duties of citizenship it pre- 
pares by imparting a mass of facts, most of which are irrelevant, 
and the rest without a key; it is diligent in teaching everything 
that adds to refinement, polish, eclat. . . . Supposing it is true 
that classical education conduces to elegance and correctness of 
style ; it cannot be said that elegance and correctness of style are 
comparable in importance to a familiarity with the principles that 
should guide the rearing of children. Grant that taste may be 
greatly improved by reading all the poetry written in extinct lan- 
guages ; yet it is not to be inferred that such improvement of 
taste is equivilent in value to an acquaintance with the laws of 
health. Accomplishments, the fine arts, belles-lettres, and all 
those things which, as we say, constitute the efflorescence of civi- 
lization, should be wholly subordinate to that knowledge and 
discipline in which civilization rests. As they occupy the liesure 
part of life, so should they occupy the liesure part of education. 
Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. 
p. 61-3. 



230 SELECTED ARTICLES 

The world mainly owes its present advanced and civilized 
state to the influence of certain physical discoveries and inven- 
tions of comparatively recent date, among which are conspicuous 
the printing press, the mariner's compass, the steam engine, and 
the substitution of machinery for manual labor. The materials 
and agents for these and other like improvements have existed 
ever since the creation of the world, but the minds of qualified 
and competent thinkers, being absorbed in less profitable* studies, 
had not been turned effectively upon them or upon their uses. 
There was electricity in the clouds, there were loadstones in the 
mountains, cataracts in rivers, and steam in household utensils, 
but the world rolled on; empires and dynasties and ages of 
barbarism passed away, and left the minds of men engaged in 
superstitious rites, in scholastic studies, and in fruitless or 
pernicious controversies. We owe the great debt of modern 
civilization to the enterprising, acute, patient, and far seeing 
innovators who, during the last few centuries, have broken away 
from the prescribed and beaten track of their predecessors, and 
have given their energies to developing, directing, and utilizing 
the illimitable forces of the material world. If these very men 
had given up their time to the objectless controversies of the 
schools, or to the more easy and agreeable studies of Latin and 
Greek, ignoring the great and vital problems of physical science, 
the dark ages would have still prevailed in Europe, and America 
might have remained an undiscovered wilderness. Dr. Jacob 
Bigelow, Remarks on Classical and Utilitarian Studies p. 31-2. 

Neither Latin or Greek would be contained in the curriculum 
of the Modern school — not, of course, because their literatures 
are less wonderful than they are reputed to be, but because their 
present position in the curriculum rests upon tradition and as- 
sumption. A positive case can be made out for neither. The 
literary argument fails, because stumbling and blundering 
through a few patches of Latin classics do not establish a con- 
tact with Latin literature. Nor does present-day teaching result 
in a practical mastery of Latin useful for other purposes. Ma- 
ture students who studied Latin through the high school, and 
perhaps to some extent in college, find it difficult or impossible 
to understand a Latin document encountered in, say, a course in 
history. If practical mastery is desired, more Latin can be 
learned in enormously less time by postponing the study until 
the student needs the language or wants it. At that stage he 



LATIN AND GREEK 231 

can learn more Latin in a few months than he would have suc- 
ceeded in acquiring through four or five years of reluctant effort 
in youth. Finally, the disciplinary argument fails, because mental 
discipline is not a real purpose; moreover, it would in any event 
constitute an argument against rather than for the study of Latin. 
I have quoted figures to show how egregiously we fail to teach 
Latin. These figures mean that instead of getting orderly train- 
ing by solving difficulties in Latin translation or composition, pu- 
pils guess, fumble, receive surreptitious assistance or accept on 
faith the injunctions of teacher and grammar. The only disci- 
pline that most students could get from their classical studies is 
a discipline in doing things as they should not be done. I should 
perhaps deal with yet another argument — viz. that Latin aids in 
securing a vigorous or graceful use of the mother tongue. Like 
the arguments previously considered, this one is unsubstantiated 
opinion; no evidence has ever been presented in proof. Abraham 
Flexner. A Modern School, p. 18-19. 

Contrary to the popular belief, the ability to speak several 
languages is not a mark of mental power. It merely indicates 
a retentive memory of a certain kind and a knack for imitating 
sounds. Sir Richard Burton relates in one of his books that 
once when near Jeddah he was accosted by a man in Turkish. 
Getting no response, he tried Persian ; then the same silence made 
him try Arabic. When his listener still kept silent he grumbled 
out his astonishment in Hindustani. That also failing, he tried 
in succession Pushtu, Armenian, English, French and Italian. 
When Burton could no longer restrain his risibilities, he 
admitted his nationality and chatted for some time with the 
stranger in English, which he spoke very well. Professor Starr 
says in his "The Truth about the Congo" that members of 
the Bantu tribes are often met with who speak several languages 
readily. A recent denominational periodical gives the names of 
several men who preach in four different languages and a 
larger number in three. One clergyman is named who uses 
Spanish, French, Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and 
English. Of another it is said that he preaches in Burmese, 
German, English, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, French 
and Quechua. When one visits an auction-room on the continent 
of Europe at a point where several languages are spoken and 
prospective buyers arrive from all parts of the world, he may 
hear the auctioneer drop one language and take up another until 



232 SELECTED ARTICLES 

all present have heard in their own tongue what the goods are 
and the bids. One also meets on the trains traveling salesmen 
who speak several languages with almost equal fluency. Cardinal 
Mezzofanti, who died in 1849, spoke fifty-eight languages and 
knew fairly well about fifty more. He was a man of very ordi- 
nary ability except that he had a singularly tenacious memory of 
an unusual kind, so that when he once heard a speech-sound 
he never forgot it. About twenty years ago there was an 
employee in one of the London offices who was able to receive 
and to send telegrams in twelve different languages. But he 
soon gave himself up to drink and became so unreliable that the 
company felt obliged to discharge him. Charles W. Super, 
Popular Science Monthly 77:566-7, Dec. 1910. 

Allow for wastage, for bad health, and for bad teaching — and 
in this country (England) for the next thirty years it is plain 
common-sense to allow for bad teaching — you get for the most 
fortunate class in the community, between 5,000 and 8,000 hours 
of teaching altogether. Now what have you got to do in that 
precious five to eight thousand hours? You have to make an 
educated man, a man equal to modern demands. Let us consider 
what these demands are. Surely our elite must have two or three 
modern languages, not a large order so far as French and Ger- 
man go, but now there is this matter of Russia. This community 
of ours must get on terms of understanding with the great 
Russian community. It is a startlingly obvious political necessity. 
Unless a number of our better-class boys talk and understand 
Russian, our relations with the Russian people must be conducted 
very largely by political exiles and friendly Germans. Very well, 
if you do not like that you must have Russian in the curriculum. 
Then there is mathematics. In this mechanical age it is ridicu- 
lous that our ruling class should not have a good mathematical 
training. It is as necessary for the gentleman nowadays to 
understand a machine as it was in the old days for a knight to 
understand his horse. Next comes the history of mankind, the 
history of the universe — you want your boy of the better class 
at least to know his place in regard to the world, to mankind, 
to the past, in order to know his relation to the task in hand. 
Philosophy — you want social philosophy and a great deal of po- 
litical philosophy, though for the great mass of our ruling class 
it does not enter into their education at all at present. There, 
let me point out, you have an explanation of the extraordinary 



LATIN AND GREEK 233 

difficulty o£ which we are constantly hearing complaints, the fail- 
ure not of the workman to understand the employer, but of the 
employer to understand the workman. Because there is no social 
political philosophy diffused through this country all our social 
and economic questions are dealt with in a petty spirit which 
seems to bring us always before we have got far with them, to 
a bitter personal class dispute. Lastly, this British Science Guild 
will not be pleased unless I include some experimental science 
for the sake of method also in this outline of a curriculum. 

That is surely a good filling-up of the 5,000 to 8,000 hours of 
the boy's education. This is as much or more than we can hope 
to do. But let us look at the time-table of a reasonably clever 
boy of fourteen or fifteen at a public school. We find Latin, 
Latin, Latin, Greek, Greek, Greek. Because of the traditional 
ineptitude of the teacher — and it is a traditional subject — not one 
boy in ten who begins Latin will get to a mastery of that lan- 
guage, and in the case of Greek not one boy in a thousand. There, 
I think, we come to the real sickness in British education. This 
ineffective classical teaching sticks like a cancer in the time-table, 
blocking it up, compressing and distorting all other teaching. 
H. G. Wells, in Lankester, Natural Science and the Classical 
System in Education, p. 200-2. 

It cannot be maintained that the classical system tends to the 
accomplishment of any of the aims which have been above enum- 
erated as those which we may expect to attain by an education 
in which literary cultivation by means of English and the other 
modern languages accompanies a thorough and sincere teaching 
and training in the methods and results and history of natural 
science. It does not in any way cultivate literary taste or implant 
either a knowledge of or liking for literature. On the contrary, 
it creates in a large majority of its victims a disgust for not only 
Latin and Greek literature, but for all serious literary study. As 
Lord Rayleigh, the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 
told the meeting at Burlington House on May 3, 1916: "It is 
nothing less than an absurdity to talk about impressing the aver- 
age school-boy with the language and literature of the ancients." 
He quoted his brother-in-law, the distinguished classical scholar, 
Henry Sidgwick, as saying that "the great impediment to a 
literary education is classics : you pretend to take a literary edu- 
cation by Greek and you end by getting none at all." When, 



234 SELECTED ARTICLES 

further, we come to that aim of education which we have spoken 
of here as "thinking truly," we find that the classical system does 
not make the smallest pretence of even attempting that result. 
There is no possibility of its introducing a youth to a perception 
of the bare facts of the world in which he lives, let alone give 
them an understanding of natural laws or a development of his 
own powers of observation, judgment, and capacity for discov- 
ering what is true and what is false. He is put through exer- 
cises in the memory and imitation of the phrases of more or 
less ignorant and deluded Roman and Greek writers. He is 
trained as the slave of authority and tradition. His outlook is 
backward rather than forward, and he is — so far as the classical 
system educates him at all — led to shrink from facing the great 
facts which actually concern his very life and his relations to its 
incidents, and to cover his ignorance and incapacity by quotation 
or invocation of extinct "masters" of whose writings his under- 
standing is as small as is their importance at the present day. 

When the worthlessness and consequently injurious character 
of the classical system in education are brought to public atten- 
tion, it has become usual of late years on the part of those who 
seek to defend that system to make assertions attributing to it 
virtues and advantages which they are not able to prove, as a 
matter of fact, to belong to it. The chief of these is the assertion 
that the classical system gives "literary education." Lovers of 
literature and adepts in that art have been induced to rally to 
the support of the classical system by this plea. But the evidence 
before us clearly shows that the classical system is destructive of 
literary education and its worst enemy. A second plea is that 
the grammatical and other such exercises of the classical system 
form an unrivalled "mental gymnastic," and that on this ground 
we should approve of its monopoly of school education. The 
reply to this is that there are other equally good "mental gym- 
nastics" available, and that in any case it is injurious to employ 
more than a very limited portion of the time and resources of 
school education in gymnastics, whether physical or mental. A 
third line which has of late years been taken in the attempt to 
defend the classical system is to call the study of the classics and 
of archaeology, history, geography and modern languages 
"humanistic." It is difficult to ascertain what its inventors really 
meant by this clumsy word, but if it is used in order to suggest a 
connection with the "humanism" of the Renascence it is grossly 
misleading; if it is intended to imply that the studies so described 



LATIN AND GREEK 235 

are "humanizing" and that others contrasted with them are 
brutalizing, it is offensive as well as untrue; lastly, if it is in- 
tended to assert that the studies classified as "humanistic" are 
especially "human" or "humane," as relating to man's thought 
and endeavor, we must protest that we cannot consent to exclude 
from the application of those terms any branch of human thought 
and endeavor. As a great thinker and writer, W. K. Clifford, has 
said, "There are no 'scientific' subjects. The subject of science is 
the human universe ; that is to say, everything that is or has been 
or may be related to man." The claim that the classical system 
furnishes an education in "humanistic" studies cannot be ad- 
mitted (even were we to accept that term), for the reason that 
the classical system fails altogether to give an education. Sir Ray 
Lankester. Natural Science and the Classical System in Educa- 
tion, p. 264-6. 

It is twenty-seven years since the class of which I was a mem- 
ber graduated from this college. . . . How did Harvard Col- 
lege prepare me, and my ninety-two classmates of the year 1856, 
for our work in a life in which we have had these homely pre- 
cepts brought close to us? The college fitted us for this active, 
bustling, hard-hitting, many-tongued world, caring nothing for 
authority and little for the past, but full of its living thoughts 
and living issues, in dealing with which there was no man who 
did not stand in pressing and constant need of every possible 
preparation as respects knowledge and exactitude and thorough- 
ness — the poor old college prepared us to play our parts in this 
world by compelling us, directly and indirectly, to devote the 
best part of our school lives to acquiring a confessedly superficial 
knowledge of two dead languages. . . . Thirty years ago, as 
for three centuries before, Greek and Latin were the funda- 
mentals. The grammatical study of two dead languages was the 
basis of all liberal education. . . . 

In pursuing Greek and Latin we had ignored our mother 
tongue. We were no more competent to pass a really searching 
examination in English literature and English composition than 
in the languages and literature of Greece and Rome. ... I was 
fortunately fond of reading and so learned English myself, and 
with some thoroughness. . . . 

I do not hesitate to say that I have been incapacitated from 
properly developing my specialty (railway management) by the 
sins of omission and commission incident to my college training. 



236 SELECTED ARTICLES 

The mischief is done, and so far as I am concerned, is irreparable. 
I am only one more sacrifice to the fetich. But I do not propose 
to be a silent sacrifice. I am here today to put the responsibility 
for my failure, so far as I have failed, where I think it belongs, 
— at the door of my preparatory and college education. . . . 

I am told that I ignore the sev.ere intellectual training I got 
in learning the Greek grammar, and in subsequently applying its 
rules ; that my memory then received an education which, turned 
since to other matters, has proved invaluable to me; that accum- 
ulated experience shows that this training can be gotten equally 
well in no other way; that, beyond all this, even my slight con- 
tact with the Greek masterpieces has left me with a subtle, but 
unmistakable residuum, impalpable perhaps, but still there, and 
very precious; that, in a word, I am what is called an educated 
man, which, but for my early contact with Greek, I would not be. 

All this, with not undue bluntness be it said, is unadulterated 
nonsense. The fact that it has been and will yet be a thousand 
times repeated, cannot make it anything else. In the first place, 
I very confidently submit, there is no more mental training in 
learning in Greek grammar by heart than in learning by heart 
any other equally difficult and, to a boy, unintelligible book. As 
a mere work of memorizing, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" 
would be at least as good. In the next place, unintelligent 
memorizing is at best a most questionable educational method. 
For one, I utterly disbelieve in it. It never did me anything but 
harm ; and learning by heart the Greek grammar did me harm — 
a great deal of harm. While I was doing it, the observing and 
reflective powers lay dormant; indeed, they were systematically 
suppressed. Their exercise was resented as a sort of imperti- 
nence. We boys took up and repeated long rules, and yet longer 
lists of exceptions to them, and it was drilled into us that we 
were not there to reason, but to rattle off something written on 
the blackboard of our minds. The faculties we had in common 
with the raven were thus cultivated at the expense of our appre- 
hension and reason which, Shakespeare tells us, makes man like 
the angels and God. . . . 

So much for what my alma mater gave me. In these days of 
repeating rifles, she sent me and my classmates out into the strife 
equipped with shields and swords and javelins. We were to 
grapple with living questions through the medium of dead lan- 
guages. It seems to me I have heard, somewhere else, of a 
child's cry for bread being answered with a stone. Button this 



LATIN AND GREEK 237 

point I do not ike publicly to tell the whole of my own experi- 
ence. It has been too bitter, too humiliating. Representing 
American educated men in the world's industrial gatherings, I 
have occupied a position of confessed inferiority. I have not 
been the equal of my peers. It was the world's Congress of to- 
day, and Latin and Greek were not current money there. . . . 

I most shrewdly suspect that there is in what are called the 
educated classes, both in this country and in Europe, a very con- 
siderable amount of affection and credulity in regard to the Greek 
and Latin masterpieces. That is jealousy prized as part of the 
body of the classics, which if publishe'd today in German or 
French or English, would not excite a passing notice. There are 
immortal poets, whose immortality, my mature judgment tells me, 
is wholly due to the fact that they lived two thousand years ago. 
Even a dead language cannot veil extreme tenlity of thought 
and fancy; and, as we have sen, John Adams and Thomas Jef- 
ferson were in their day at a loss to account for the reputation 
even of Plato. ... 

The familiarity with the classic tongues which would enable a 
man to appreciate the classic literatures in any real sense of the 
etrm is a thing which cannot be generally imparted. Even if the 
beauties which are claimed to be there are there, they must per- 
force remain conceald from all, save a very few, outside of the 
class of professional scholars. 

But are those transcendent beauties really there? I greatly 
doubt. I shall never be able to judge for myself, for a mere 
lexican-and-grammar acquaintance with a language I hold to be 
no acquaintance at all. But we can judge a little of what we do 
not know by what we do know, and I find it harder and harder 
to believe that in practical richness the Greek literature equals the 
German, or the Latin, the French. Leaving practical richnss 
aside, are there in the classic masterpieces any bits of literary 
workmanship which takes precedence of what may be picked out 
of Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyon and Clarendon and Ad- 
dison and Swift and Goldsmith and Gray and Burke and Gibbon 
and Shelley and Burns and Macaulay nd Carlyle and Hawthorne 
and Thackeray and Tennyson ? If there are any such transcendent 
bits, I can only say that our finest scholars have failed most 
lamentably in their attempts at rendering them into English. 

For myself, I cannot but think that the species of sanctity 
which has now, ever since the revival of learning, hedged the 
classics, is destined soon to disappear. Charles Francis Adams. 
A College Fetich. 



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